so i was pretty emotional this Christmas... i think it comes with my age. and the stage of life i am in. and the fact that i am seeing the results of years of parenting. and those results aren't always stellar. and sometimes it is because i have not sown what i really wanted to reap. and sometimes because i am selfish, and stubborn, and lazy, and i just didn't think time would go by this fast...
Christmas eve we went (sans millie who was at work) to the family service. we like that service. and not for really spiritual reasons. it is at 4 which is a good time and doesn't cut into dinner. it isn't crowded. it is short and sweet and there are oodles of opportunities for us to see kids misbehave and doing really funny kid things and we love that...
but this year, i kind of wanted us to do the grown up candlelight service. and all of us be there together. but the kids and adam wanted the family service. and part of me wanted the path of least resistance. and the path of not having to dress up or find a parking space.
so we arrived home after the easy service. i took a shower and needed to start dinner. we do fondue on Christmas eve and i had bread to cut and cheese to melt. but it was raining and i had put clean sanitized sheets (fresh from our rockin' new washer with a sanitize cycle) on the bed and i was clean from my shower so i lay down for a few minutes/almost an hour. and i mused...
i laid down and listened to the rain and thought about how very far i was from bethlehem. laying in my comfortable sanitized sheets. going to the "easy/uncrowded/plenty of parking" family service. listening to maxx and rosie watching dr. who in the family room. millie playing music in her room and trying on clothes that she had just bought herself at work even though it was Christmas the next day. it didn't sound "holy" in my house at all. i was a long way from bethlehem. physically and mentally. emotionally.
i cried because i have such stupid first world problems. because i wanted to be ann voskamp reading Scripture with her farmer husband and kids and buying goats for african children instead of purchasing another pair of jeans for spoiled american children who happen to have my last name. i am reaping the seeds of materialism that i have sown into my children. i cried because i could sanitize my laundry but not my heart. i was laying in white sanitized sheets with a heart as black as night. and there wasn't an appliance in the world that could clean my heart. or my childrens' hearts...
i was crying while i listened to the rain falling. and i wondered if it rained the night that Jesus began His reign as the Incarnate One. God in the flesh. i am sure that the baby Jesus cried that night. a baby cries. those first tears are tears of fear. his world has changed from quiet dark womb to noisy cold wide world. i cried tears of fear that i have messed this whole parenting thing up irreversibly. kids who watch dr. who while arguing about what time they will get up and open gifts and kids who buy presents for themselves on Christmas eve and choose the "easy" service. kids who are way too much like their mother. i cried because i knew where they had gotten all those ideas. all that sin. that dr. who fascination. the preoccupation with gifts instead of the Giver. these were all passed down through their mother.
God has been good to me. and perhaps that has been to my detriment...
"Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger—
according to the way you react to it.
And we have reacted the wrong way.”
from mere christianity by c.s. lewis
then i remembered the word "Incarnate" means that God is "put into flesh". that is the meaning of Christmas. no matter what they inherit from me in the flesh, Christmas means that Emmanuel has come... and has overcome.
God. with. us.
whatever these children get from me has been graciously overcome by the reality of "God with us". Christ's birth as the Son of Man/Son of God means that the curse is lifted. even the curse that is in inherent and inherited in me.
"Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given." As Jesus Christ is a child in his human nature, he is born, begotten of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary. He is as truly-born, as certainly a child, as any other man that ever lived upon the face of the earth. He is thus in his humanity a child born. But as Jesus Christ is God's Son, he is not born; but given, begotten of his Father from before all worlds, begotten—not made, being of the same substance with the Father. The doctrine of the eternal affiliation of Christ is to be received as an undoubted truth of our holy religion. But as to any explanation of it, no man should venture thereon, for it remaineth among the deep things of God—one of those solemn mysteries indeed, into which the angels dare not look, nor do they desire to pry into it—a mystery which we must not attempt to fathom, for it is utterly beyond the grasp of any finite being. As well might a gnat seek to drink in the ocean, as a finite creature to comprehend the Eternal God. A God whom we could understand would be no God. If we could grasp him he could not be infinite: if we could understand him, then were he not divine." {c.h. spurgeon}
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see,
Hail, the incarnate deity
Pleased as Man with men to dwell,
Jesus, our Emmanuel.
{charles wesley}
with men to dwell. He makes His dwelling with us. let it rain. He reigns.