Christmas Eve: Joy to the World!

Read Isaiah 40:9

All my heart today rejoices
As I hear, far and near
sweetest angel voices
"Christ is born," their choirs are singing,
'Til the air everywhere
now with joy is ringing.

Hark! a voice from yonder manger
Soft and sweet doth entreat;
"Flee from woe and danger!
Brethren, come from all that grieves you,
You are freed --
All you need I will surely give you."

Come then, let us hasten yonder!
Here let all, great and small,
kneel in awe and wonder!
Love Him who with love is yearning!
Hail the Star that from far
bright with hope is burning!

- Paul Gerhardt

Week 4, Wednesday: Another Arrival

Read Revelation 22:16-20

It might seems strange to some people to spend the month of December ancitipating and preparing for a birth that happened 2000 years ago. Why bother rehashing details and events that are so well known? Why take the time to wait for old news?

Part of the answer is that the arrival of God's Son in Bethlehem has so many parallels to his arrival in our hearts today. Reflection helps us make it personal.

But there's something more, too. Because there will be a second arrival. Christ promised to come back. Grasping the wonder of his birth should serve to make us long for his return even more. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

O God, our loving Father,
help us rightly to remember the birth of Jesus,
that we may share in the song of the angels,
the gladness of the shepherds,
and the worship of the wise men...
May the Christmas morning
make us happy to be thy children
and the Christmas evening
bring us to our beds with grateful thoughts.,
forgiving and forgiven, for Jesus' sake.
Amen.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson

Week 4, Tuesday: No More Lists

Read Luke 2:25-32
Christmas seems to be all about lists. Santa, of course, has THE list, or two, really. Lists of the naughties and the nices. Then the adults have lists of things to do and all the kids have the lists of things they want.

Simeon didn't have a list. He only had one thing he was waiting for: comfort from God. And God had told him he wouldn't die until he saw it.

Then one day, he feels compelled to go to the temple, where he sees a baby that's barely a week old. And Simeon is completely satisfied. He didn't need to live on until the baby grew up and did something. He didn't need to wish for the day Israel would be out from under the Romans. Having the chance to just see Jesus and know he was alive was all Simeon needed in order to have peace and joy.

What's on our lists this Christmas? What are we waiting and hoping for? Will we recognize Jesus as being enough?

Week 4, Monday: God in Furoshiki

Read Luke 2:7, John 19:40
Here in the home stretch before Christmas, the focus shifts from the gift buying to the gift wrapping. You've got the presents: now it's time for presentation.

Good gift wrapping is an art that takes skill and care. You want sharp corners, no rips, and invisible tape. You are wanting the packaging to reflect the meaningfulness of the gift. And packaging creates a sense of wonder. What's inside?

The Japanese have a gift wrapping technique known as furoshiki. Instead of paper, they use cloth to wrap their gifts. The cloth is both practical and beautiful, and it can be used on more than one occasion.

When God gave us Jesus as a baby, he came furoshiki-style, in cloths, lying in a manger. He was wrapped up like a precious gift. And there was the sense of wonder that comes with a wrapped gift: Who was he? What would he become?

But that wasn't the only time Jesus was wrapped in cloth. Cloth was used on another occasion, at the end of his earthly life, when he was laid in the tomb. The similarity of the wrapping reminds us that his death was also a gift, a great sacrifice of love, wrapped carefully, just for us. That too was a wonder: Who was he? What did it mean?

As you wrap your own gifts this year, what are you wondering about Jesus? Who has he become in your life? Take a moment to thank God again for the gift of the life and death of his Son, so carefully wrapped and presented to us.

Week 4, Sunday: God Dives Deep

Read John 1:1-14, Ephesians 1:8-10

In the Christian story, God descends to reascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity...But he goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with him...

One may think of a diver, first reducing himself to nakedness, then glancing in mid-air, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through green and warm water into black and cold water, down through increasing pressure into the death-like region of ooze and slime and old decay; then up again, back to color and light, his lungs almost bursting, till suddenly he breaks surface again, holding in his hand the dripping, precious thing that he went down to recover. He and it are both colored now that they have come up into the light: down below, where it lay colorless in the dark, he lost his color, too.

-- C.S. Lewis, Miracles

Week 3, Saturday: The Gift of Gift-Giving

James 1:17

Gift giving takes a lot of work -- at least if you decide to not opt for the fallback gift card option. What makes a present perfect for someone? It has to be something that is what the other person has been wanting, but maybe that they've never even told you out loud. And when they open it, they immediately know how much you care about them because the gift communicates your love.

God is the ultimate gift giver. His gifts are good and perfect. He likes to do it (Matthew 7:11), he knows what our deepest wishes are (1 Peter 1:8-9) and we know by what he gave how much he loves us (John 15:13).

As you scramble to do your last minute shopping and are racking your brain for what to get that person on your list, take a moment to thank God for how much effort he puts into his gift giving, and how well he knows you.

Week 3, Friday: The Journey of the Magi

Read Matthew 2:1-16

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The was deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter."
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires gong out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

- T.S. Eliot