The verse on the front of my Christmas card this year was a great consolation for me to pray with on my silent retreat this past year and for Christmas I wanted to share a bit of that consolation and grace from Jesus with everyone!
After praying with Matthew 2:1-12, at supper that evening on the same day, I crossed paths with an elderly priest as we headed to our tables. His face was beaming ear to ear with great joy and I wondered what had inspired that as he tended to be pretty straight faced when I saw him. I looked at his plate, all he was having for supper was a pile of rice and 4 fresh chocolate chip cookies! I laughed (silently) to myself! That was very unexpected and gave me a lot of joy to witness his pure joy in something so simple! I imagined this pure genuine, infectious kind of joy must be a tiny glimpse of the immense joy of the Magi upon finding Jesus.
All of Jerusalem, the “wise,” the leaders and all were completely unaware that their long awaited Messiah, Jesus, had arrived and a star marked the place. These were God's chosen people! The prophets had spoken to them they had been told all the signs and all what their Messiah would be yet they still missed His entrance. Jesus entered our world quietly, but not really intentionally hidden. The wise men, foreigners, found Jesus. The wise men genuinely were seeking the fullness of truth, and so they found what their hearts truly desired. They found the long awaited Messiah. These wise men were entirely spiritually free in that their understanding of what a king should or should not look like where he should or should not be found and all did not bind them from recognizing the King of the Jews. His simple, ordinary, lowly, vulnerable entrance and appearance did not lead them to despair, question or doubt. They in great spiritual freedom simply received Jesus, the Way, Truth, and Life fully as He was. They “rejoiced exceedingly with great joy,” as they shared in God’s abundant unhidden joy in His Son and what was to come for all of humanity through Him!
For many of us Christmas doesn't look the same as we're accustomed to this year. It isn't what we think it should be and has become part of the great general lament of the year 2020. Many of us did forge on to try to make Christmas celebrations the same. Many had to make sacrifices and changes with their families. My Christmas certainly has been quite different. I wasn't able to see all of my family, and I didn't have multiple gatherings to attend. I knew others were experiencing the same or worse in their circumstances. This left me feeling kind of somber on Christmas Eve, but then I realized while maybe we're being stripped of some or all of the things we love about Christmas, none of those things are Christmas. Christmas is Jesus' birth and the full expression of God's love for us in giving us His Son. God's love unceasingly permeates our lives through His love that knows no bounds that we share now at Christmas and everyday beyond it.
Especially as this unique and trying year of 2020 comes to an end, and we get ready for a new year of unknowns, let us not get caught up in our own limited expectations and parameters of how we think things should go, or what we have been told and think we should have. As it did the people of Jerusalem, that can blind us from seeing Christ’s goodness in every moment of our lives and in every person we encounter. Jesus is actively loving us in all things, great, small, beautiful, challenging, heart breaking, simple and unexpected. This year as things are different, perhaps we have a greater opportunity, more room, more time for resting in the joy of Christ's birth.
Let us simply in every moment have great hope in the Lord, and desire His truth and goodness. See the good in even something as simple as a bunch of fresh cookies and have great gratitude to Jesus for all of it. Gratitude is key and as crazy as this year has been there is soooooo much to be grateful for when you really stop to honestly look back on it. God delights in us as we delight in the good we find in His creation as it is all a great gift He freely shares with us constantly. More importantly see God's good in something as simple yet entirely beautiful as the Baby Jesus. I pray your heart is open to simply receive fully God’s true pure immense joy in celebrating the birth of His Son Jesus! This is the source of our Christmas joy! I pray we all seek to be more aware of Jesus, and His unceasing love and joy in us daily, in all things, giving Him always the greatest glory!
