Christmas Realization

With each Christmas season that approaches, I realize more and more how I still don't grasp the true significance of it. Yes, we could socially criticize our consumerist country; where the giving (& buying) of gifts is the focus of our energy. We could go there, but we are not there. We are not side-lined critics. We are active players. We are those "in the world, but not of the world" and I realize how hard that is to act out living in this country. And I'm sure God is up there almost laughing and probably lamenting us who still don’t get it. Our nativity scenes are set up in our houses along with our Christmas songs playing and we try to show our neighbors, our friends and family that we do know what this season is all about. The Christmas season seems to be such an external presentation of sorts. This season should actually be an inward realization of what it is really all about. And what do we know about this season? Why do we celebrate? We celebrate the birth of Jesus. Who is in fact living inside us every single day. "Living inside us" is what we need to pay more attention to.

Every Christmas morning for a number of years I have read to my family the devotional My Utmost for His Highest, December 25. Here is what Oswald Chambers says about the day:

"Just as Our Lord came into human history from outside, so He must come into me from outside. Have I allowed my personal human life to become a 'Bethlehem' for the Son of God? I cannot enter into the realm of the Kingdom of God unless I am born from above by a birth totally unlike natural birth…The Characteristic of the new birth is that I yield myself so completely to God that Christ is formed in me. Immediately Christ is formed in me, His nature begins to work through me."

How many times have we proclaimed that Jesus is the reason for the season? Countless. But it goes way beyond that. What is the explanation of that phrase? It's our lives, our testimony. It's how we respond to the facts of what God did for us.

The thought of God Incarnate being born to a teenage girl who would someday become the King of Israel and ultimately the King of our lives just floors me every time. I wish each Christmas morning – the day we celebrate – I could fall flat on my face in reverence and cry out with thanksgiving, knowing that Jesus was born to be my King and to live inside me. This Christmas could be the time to share in this realization and thanksgiving.