It’s Christmas-time. Better yet, it’s Christmas day and I survived…the tree has only fallen a couple times, it was a short season and somehow I made it through all the parties and responsibilities without yelling at anyone…I think. The presents have been wrapped, await opening. I think I even kept a Godly-mindset through this season…you know, the whole “reason for the season” thing. As a rule I love Christmas…this one has just worn on me and felt like it was heavier. And I don’t seem to be alone…others have said the same thing.
I don’t like being the one who others can learn from…I’d much prefer to pull object lessons from other’s struggles. But this year it was me…more importantly, this season…and this week. We’ve always carefully guarded our spending at Christmastime, I firmly believe it’s not a time to go into debt. The gifts this year were hard because kids are growing up, wanting bigger things…but we were approaching the Day and I thought “I’ve done it…didn’t have to use credit cards, we’ve still got a meager savings left…”
And then our car quit. Now, with the above confessions, you can rightly guess that our car isn’t new, but it has been fairly faithful and we’ve had years of memories in it. I’m not one to name their car, but I may be a little sentimental as it’s brought babies home, carried them on many an adventure and possibly some misadventures. We had the mechanic look at it, praying it’d just be another patch job…but they finally said “it can’t be fixed.”
You know those commercials that show people getting a car with a bow on it for Christmas. Sure…that’d be a gift that would have been welcome. But not this way…the week of Christmas, gifts already wrapped and under the tree…and now we’re searching for a used car and we don’t even have a trade-in. In the quiet, I whispered “God, I didn’t want this gift…not this way.” He responded “I know…they didn’t want Me either.”
And I got a different look at the Christmas Story…. The Savior of the world comes…and He wasn’t the gift they wanted, “not this way.” He was a baby in a manger…no power, no money. He grew up a carpenter…not a studious theologian ready to argue facts or a militant-minded hero ready to take on the enemy. Isaiah wrote thousands of years before the birth of Jesus “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” (Is 53:3). Imagine the Messiah, promised since the fall of mankind, knowing that he would be the gift that…people didn’t want…”not that way.” Jesus was at home for 30 years, was only publicly teaching for 3 years before His death…why, Alexander the Great had been 20 when he took over the kingdom and died similarly at 32 years old, having conquered the then-known world. The people who the Messiah had been promised to had waited generations for a King like Alexander the Great…but got Jesus instead.
Time for retrospection. What “gifts” has God possibly brought your way this year that, well, maybe you didn’t want? At least “not this way.” Did you struggle with God’s sovereignty? Did you struggle with the plan that He has for you? Did you feel like maybe you’re going through hard enough times that God isn’t in control, maybe the Devil is winning? Let us reflect today on the words of this very same Jesus, the gift that no one wanted…”but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” Jn 16:33. He didn’t say he’d overcome the reputation of being born to a virgin, he didn’t say he’d overcome the hatred of the church who thought they knew better than him, he didn’t say he’d overcome the conquering Rome…the gift He offered and offers now is the ability to overcome the WORLD. I’d say all the problems you and I may be facing this season of our lives is encompassed in “the world.”
So, whether you are looking at unexpected life changes, unexpected expenses, unexpected health changes, unexpected heartbreak…remember that the Gift no one wanted said He’d already overcome these things. When the dark world around us wants hope…remember this amazing gift in your heart, and live and share that we know this Hope. “She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins….’they will call him Immanuel”–which means ‘God with us.'” Matthew 1:21-22
Merry Christmas.
