Comfortable Christmas?
I do not enjoy cold weather, I never have. I probably tolerate it more now than ever before in my life but I’m just not a fan. My feet are cold even in the summertime! Tonight, we will be experiencing cold across the country unlike what we are used to. This storm has been labeled the “generational storm” meaning it’s the type of cold that is experienced just once in a person’s life. And it’s coming right at Christmastime. People are changing their travel plans, outfits for Christmas are being rethought, and many of us (ok…me) just want to hibernate!
Yet all my focus lately has been on the baby in the manger that came to save the world…he wasn’t the pearlized white painted one like the nativity scene in my foyer, nor the vibrant painted one in another scene in the kitchen. He wasn’t the Little People plastic Jesus in the hay that is under my tree. He was an ooey gooey baby born with all the ooey gooeyness that baby’s come with when they enter this world. Except that he didn’t enter in a hospital bed, birthing tub, or bedroom- he entered this world in a stinky barn to a scared momma far from home. His first Christmas was not “comfortable.”
Most of Jesus’s life wasn’t one of comfort. A nomad walking from place to place sharing the gospel message. Sometimes not knowing where the next meal would come from, nor the next place he would lay his head. Always knowing that eventually, his purpose of spreading the Good News, equipping the disciples, and healing the sick would come to an abrupt end. He didn’t let any of that stop him from his purpose and plan. He didn’t hibernate on cold days… he didn’t find a shade tree and stop for a vacation. He rested in the rhythm of the Sabbath, but always was carrying out his father’s plan.
It’s so easy to be bummed by this unexpected and extremely cold snap because we are focusing on what it will do to “our plans.” But God keeps reminding me that most of what Christmas looks like in the USA looks nothing like what God would expect it to. As I am already in a season of life where Christmas morning will look different than it has ever looked before, this added cold snap is just a not-so-gentle reminder that Jesus’s time on earth from the babe in the manger to his death on the cross was anything but a comfortable best-laid plan being playing out. Thank you, God for allowing me to celebrate the birth of your son this week, forgive me when I am looking at this celebration through the wrong lens.
