You already know what I’m going to write about. It’s after Christmas and the boxes are gone and we are left with grateful hearts that we have people. We make memories that will outlast the thing in the box. The Advent Devotional my church created for Day 23 suggested these readings: Isaiah 6:1-7, Philippians 2:5-7, and John 6:38-40. You can look those up. The worship song for this devotion is “Holy”, a newer song written by David Leonard. It was originally intended for Easter but shifted to Christmas because the incarnation is indescribable and unfathomed. We love formulas so 100% – God and 100% – man does not compute. The incarnation sets our faith apart from all other religions, and I quote, “There is something incredibly beautiful about pairing the perfect holiness of God – that characteristic that sets him apart and so high above us – and matching that with the humility of the incarnation. In any worldly context, these characteristics shouldn’t coexist, and yet in the birth of Jesus Christ we can respond with awe and wonder at the fact that the infinite, holy, glorious God of the universe humbled himself to be born as a helpless baby”.
There is a tension in this story. You see here that God already made the plan of redemption. I didn’t even have a say in it because I did not know that I needed it. It wasn’t on my Christmas list because God gave me what He knew I needed more than anything. He gave His only begotten Son, full of grace and truth. I like nice things but this is an eternal category. As His plan amazes us we can chuck our own feeble plans. We can chuck the to do list and we can chuck our Christmas lists too. Our planning is fun and we hope to make our people happy with gifts. In reality, those gifts will soon be forgotten. We are so small compared to this holiness and His holy gift is still offered to us.
