The Miracle of Christmas:
To reflect on the Christmas story is not only to recognize the miracle in the birth of God’s own Son, Jesus, our Saviour born of a virgin mother, but to recognize in it the miracle for our selves, that God, Immanuel, came to be with us. Christmas is about God making his way into our world. Christmas is not about the commercialism, not about the celebrations we make of it today, with all the lights and trimmings, or the gift-giving even, but the willingness of our God to step out of the glories of heaven to make his home amongst us. Jesus, Our Immanuel, ‘God with us’.
The real gift of Christmas is that God chose to be with us, not only as the child in the manger we sentimentalize over at Christmas time, but as the God who comes to us in the reality of our everyday life. Summoned by a decree from the governor of Rome ordering the whole world to be registered in a census, Mary in full-term pregnancy along with her husband Joseph travelled to Bethlehem to be registered. It was in the midst of that Chaotic, and uncertain time, not so unlike the world we live in today, that Christ was born. Christmas is a reminder for us to not only look for Christ in the celebrations, in the quiet moments, or in the peace and joy filled moments of the season, but to expect him to come, in the times when we least expect, in the places we least likely would look, and in the persons we least likely think to find him. Jesus was born in a secluded out of the way place, to a nondescript couple of no regal bearings, his birth announcement was given by the angels to poor lowly shepherds on the hillside tending their sheep, and yet it was made known the world over. “Going to Bethlehem to see what the angels had told them, “To you is born this day in the city of David, a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord… Finding Mary, Joseph and the child lying in a manger, they went and told all that had been made known to them about the child (Luke 2:11,12).”
In the most unlikely circumstances, under the most unlikely conditions, to the most unlikely people, yet God came, and still keeps coming in our world today. As the in the song “The miracle of Christmas” by Steven Curtis Chapman, “So come to Bethlehem and see, For the God who spoke is speaking still, and the God who came still comes, and the miracle that happened still happens in the heart that will believe, and receive the miracle of Christmas.” I extend to you and yours greetings for a most blessed Christmas and New Year.
Blessings
Rev. Hannah+
