I’ve a grown a bit weary of the frivolities of Christmas.  Cheap strings of lights on houses, larger-than-life candy canes lining driveways, Santa posing for kids’ photos in the mall, junk mail with pictures of shiny red bows on tools offering “More Christmas”…the list goes on and on.  All of these things that modern marketing techniques now leverage to benefit our sacred economy threaten to distract us from the real reason we celebrate Christmas.  I know, I know, we hear it every year.  Jesus is the Reason for the Season.  So if that’s the case, than why isn’t He the Focus of the Season?  Why do we pour so much energy into decorating our houses and buying gifts yet almost overlook worshiping Him?

Perhaps it is because Jesus’ birthday seems irrelevant to our daily lives.  All believers agree that it’s wonderful that God sent His son to earth as a baby to live a sinless life and be crucified on the cross so that all who confess their wrongdoing and believe in Him can have eternal life with Him in heaven.  This fact alone should be enough to bring us to our knees in worship of our Creator.  But the reality is that we have heard it so many times, it has become commonplace information in our minds.  Maybe you are above the numbness of which I speak, but I am sad to say that often I am not.  When I hear the Gospel spoken, many times it goes in one ear and out the other, and I take for granted the sacrifice Jesus paid so that I may live.

Similarly, when December rolls around yet again, I find myself shopping for gifts, decorating the house, and taking the time to flip through all the toy catalogs that come in the mail, even though I’ve seen them all twice, with barely a thought toward the virgin-born spotless Lamb of God for which all of this seasonal hooplah originated.  And I think it all goes back to the thought of Jesus as a baby in a manger with cows mooing, and horse-tails swooshing, and stars twinkling silently in the dark, damp night.  This nativity scene which we celebrate, though it should bring a tremendous moment of worship for those who believe, seems like just a moment in history.  A tired mom and dad, a brand-new baby, and lots of hay and animals.  What does that have do, really, with my daily life and my daily struggles?

I’m not sure that I can express in a clear manner the thoughts that began swirling in my mind this morning, but I’m going to try.  Upon hearing the news of a local girl who died of cancer yesterday, just two years after her mother died of cancer, leaving her older sister and disabled father hurting yet again, thoughts of pain and death and loss and grief keep crowding out the thoughts of what I need to be doing today.  Names and faces of people I have known or heard of who have recently died or who are enduring painful trials even now keep making their way forward in my thoughts, and I am faced with the reality that God allows suffering.  God could stop disease and death.  He could.  But He doesn’t.  It’s the biggest question perhaps any of us have ever had about God.  Why doesn’t He just let us live and be happy?  I don’t know.  I trust Him anyway.  I know that He uses suffering to draw us closer to Himself, to bring more glory to Himself, to make us stronger and purer, but I still can’t reckon it in my mind.  All I can do is trust.  As I started contemplating these thoughts this morning, I asked God why.  Why did He create this broken world?  Why doesn’t He fix it?  Why does He keep letting innocent people suffer?  Why do we have to hurt?  How can such a perfect, holy God create something that is now so far from perfection and holiness?  My questions aren’t answered and perhaps never will be.  But God did respond.  “The world wasn’t broken when I created it,” He reminded me.  It broke the day sin entered the world.  It broke the day Adam and Eve disobeyed.  Pain, hard work, suffering, and death–they all started with sin.  A person’s suffering may not be a direct result of a particular sin, or even of a life of sin, but suffering itself is a result of sin.

So if we were born into sin through Adam (and forgive me for not researching Bible verses to support this at the moment), then we were born hopeless, and we can’t do good.  So sin continues.  Suffering continues.  And that’s when the relevancy of Christmas hit me this morning.  God sent His son to earth as a baby–a baby fully human and born into a sinful world–and yet that baby grew into a boy, a teenager, and a man, who did not do wrong.  Ever.  He did not sin.  Did not disobey.  Did not talk disrespectfully to His parents, did not push the boundaries that were set, did not tell a fib, or spread a rumor, or thumb His nose at authority.  Jesus did not sin.  And yet He was tempted, which meant that when disobedience was offered to Him as a choice, something inside of Him felt an inclination to do that wrong thing, and He had to make a conscious decision to do what was right.  If that is not the case, than I must misunderstand what temptation really is.  But if my understanding of temptation is correct, than Jesus proved that it is entirely possible for us as humans to always choose obedience.  He did it.  He was born of a man, (well really a woman), yet He managed to live His entire life making only good choices.  So then the baby in the manger is no longer irrelevant to our present daily struggles.  The baby in the manger is HOPE.  Hope is more than wishful thinking.  Hope is being sure of what we know to be true.  We know that God has given us every thing we need for life through His Holy Spirit, and the baby in the manger who grew up to live a pure, holy life gives us HOPE that we can do the same thing.  While we know that nothing we can do can establish our relationship with the Father besides the blood of Jesus, and we know that Romans 3:23 tells us, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” we can at the same time, stand confident knowing that baby Jesus in the manger gives us hope that we can accept the forgiveness God offers to us and begin to make right choices to honor Him from here on out.

Pain and suffering will continue.  And they are perhaps magnified during the Christmas season.  But maybe you and I can let the lights and the festivities and the music direct our thoughts toward the baby in the manger that gives us hope–hope that we have Someone to run to when the hurt goes deep; hope that we can be forgiven just by believing in Him; hope that we can honor Him by making good choices; hope that endures longer than the passing of time; hope that is completely relevant to our daily lives.

I’ve got some more thinking to do.  Because, despite my desire to not be distracted by seasonal goings-on, I still put lights in my yard, gifts under the tree, and icing on homemade cookies.  I love doing those things, and I love the sweet memories Christmas music and traditions bring about.  Christmas, while it’s truly about the hope Jesus brought to earth, is also synonymous with warm fuzzy feelings and precious family time.  I want to continue my own Christmas traditions in such a way that they magnify the true meaning of Christmas rather than deter from it, and I want to express the Hope of Christmas to my children so that they recognize the true meaning of these traditions.