For You
Christmas 2024 | Written By: Dinah Wade
I have a confession to make. I have not enjoyed the season of Advent for about 20 years now. It has not always been this way as I have been one of those Christmas crazies in just about every way. I have cherished the quiet moments of looking at each ornament on the tree, cherishing the people and places from which they came. I even love being in the midst of frantic shoppers while waiting in that long line to check out with that last gift, you know the one, in which you are painfully aware that your Christmas list is complete, but somehow it just doesn’t seem enough. Down through the years, my favorite part of the Christmas was writing to my children about the meaning of Christmas and my heart for them to know and love Jesus in this season of His birth. So what happened?
Years ago on Christmas morning, I was up early and excited to put the final touches of the stocking and breakfast preparations. As I looked in the bathroom mirror to put on my elf hat, there is a story there, too, but I will not go into that now, I prayed excitedly to Jesus, “Happy Birthday!” What I heard has confused me for a couple of decades, pondering in my heart and not quite knowing what to do with the thought that ran through my mind that Christmas morning which was, “It is not my birthday.”
Stopped, I froze. What? I began to think about the fact that in actuality no one knows the day and time of His birth. My mind was racing. I thought maybe it was hurtful that we all had a party at His expense, and it was not the actual day. After all, He became human and experienced the feelings of being human, of what it is like to be so missed. I moved on and did enjoy the day with my family with a nagging thought that I had been getting something all wrong.
This Christmas the answer hit me like a ton of bricks one Sunday in church as I heard a wonderful sermon on Luke 2, reciting
“And in the same region there were some shepherds staying out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terribly frightened. And the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which shall be for all the people, for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you; you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.’
It was at this point that I was stopped once again. I heard Luke say that this was ‘for you’—twice. For you. For me. Strangely, I felt exposed to God as if I were standing there, before Him face to face, hearing Him say and seem to look me in the eye asking me if I was aware that He came for, saw me and wants me. Not theologically, intellectually, or especially not as a sweet babe with adoring animals all around kind of way in which I could distance myself from Him. This incarnate God has no beginning or end as He is eternal and infinite. He is the Holy One of Israel, the Ancient of Days, the Almighty, and holds the globe by some mysterious thread as I stand on it today. I began to feel a bit of the terror the shepherds were said to experience, grasping that the King and Lord of the universe come near so He could be known and loved, so that I could be known and loved. This intimate invitation is what scared me and was an invitation to enter more into the healing of an old wound and its resulting fear of intimacy.
So I believe that Christmas 20 years ago was the beginning of a deeper wooing by a strange and wonderful God who would eventually die to make it possible for me to be His bride, even though I often choose tinsel and glitter instead of this Marvel, God with us, Emmanuel. I pray that I will come to be one who drops the trappings of Christmas, of this world, of my old nature, and cling to the One who is stealing my heart one moment at a time, exposed in vulnerability and displaying humility being a helpless baby in the arms of an inexperienced teenage mother making a quiet splash in the ocean of time to reveal the love that we have all been longing for and are also afraid to trust.
Luke 2 goes on to say in verse 16 that the shepherds “came in haste and found their way.” May we as well this Christmas. As the angel said to Mary at her visitation, “For nothing will be impossible with God.”