God didn’t create Christmas, we did.
I find Christmas an unusual festival. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful or angry. I just want to be honest about how I’ve perceived it in the past few years.
I believe that love was born in a humble street stable. I believe that many men who studied the stars travelled for months to visit Him. I believe that He was born to die for all of humankind. But I believe this story is worth more than a condensed version that most of us are given each year.
Although this event within the gospel is singled out today, it confuses me to think that the church of acts didn’t have such a season. Rather for them, the reality of Jesus birth and death were always celebrated.
With today being beautifully and poetically hijacked from celebrations of light, it’s an opportunity to recognise the desperate awaited saviour thought to be born of royalty but instead was born of a common couple. Thus began His mission of flipping expectations, and showing us the upside down kingdom. Love was not born in the winter, neither was he ‘silent’. His birth was painful and dirty and of holy importance.
Jesus exceeds the present day and takes us on a Journey. His birth enabled this journey. And the journey neither began nor ends today.
Immanuel = God With Us
