I love all the trappings of Christmas. Bing and his tunes, Macy’s balloons, mistletoe kisses, Santa Claus wishes, the tinsel and the clatter and waking up “to see what was the matter.” I don’t even complain about the crowded shops. The flight is full, the restaurant is packed. Well, it’s Christmas!
Why do I love it so much? Because someone somewhere will ask the question “What’s the big deal about the baby in the manger?”
Christmas is how it all began, the perpetual presence of Christ in our lives. He called himself “Immanuel,” which means “God with us.” God where we are: at the office, in the kitchen, on the plane, around the tree. The manger invites, even dares us to believe that the best is yet to be. And it could all begin today. This is the moment….
When love came down to save us from ourselves.
One busy holiday season traffic had turned the streets near the mall into chaos. I made a right turn onto the avenue just as a kid in a low-riding, wide-wheeled, exhaust-puffing jalopy made a reckless U-turn around the median. We nearly shared paint. I honked at him, not a polite “Ahem, excuse me,” but a long, strong, “Do you know what you almost did?!?”
As the car accelerated, a long arm came out of the passenger’s-side window and gave me a backhanded, one-fingered wave.
I sped up. Thanks to a traffic light, I was soon side by side with the perpetrator. “You need to watch that wave, son,” I said. In an ideal world he would have apologized, and I would have wished him a merry Christmas, but he smirked and said, “Make me!”
When was the last time I heard someone say, “Make me?” Not since high school. The boy was a skinny, floppy-haired, testosterone-laden adolescent riding shotgun in his buddy’s car. I’m a 60-year-old pastor. The saints in heaven and all the angels were saying, “Drive away, Lucado.”
Did I listen? No. That punk had activated the punk inside me. “Okay, where do you want to go?” I snarled. Yes, I really did.
The light turned and I accelerated. In my side-view mirror I could see that the two boys were engaged in an animated exchange. By the time I reached the next stoplight, they were nowhere to be seen. Boy, was I relieved. I drove the rest of the way asking myself, Did you really just dare a kid to fight? Are you crazy?
In that moment I forgot that the teen was a creation of God. He was a disrespectful jerk and I let him bring out the disrespectful jerk in me. The Bible has a name for this punkish tendency: our sinful nature, the stubborn, selfcentered attitude that says, “My way or the highway.”
Each of us entered the world with a sinful nature. God entered the world to take it away. Christmas commemorates the day and the way God saved us from ourselves.
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When hope is there for the hopeless.
Two years ago, the second weekend of Advent, I came home one night to find my wife, Denalyn, waiting for me in the kitchen. Her expression said that something was terribly wrong.
“Max,” she said, “Jenna is pregnant.” Jenna, our oldest daughter.
Denalyn’s announcement did not match her demeanor. She should have been waving her arms and hugging me. We would be grandparents at last! But her eyes were filled with tears. “She’s in the emergency room,” she said.
Emergency rooms do not wear Christmas decorations well. A garland does not make an X-ray machine festive. Red and green bulbs cannot shed a happy glow on a gurney. An ER is still an ER, even at Christmas, and our daughter was in the ER.
A nurse led us down the hallway into a room. Jenna was on the bed. She tried to be stoic, and succeeded, for about 10 seconds. Then she began to cry. She had wanted to surprise the family. She wanted to make a big deal out of a Christmas pregnancy. She wanted to have a baby.
By the next morning, the doctor informed us it wasn’t to be. Our family’s December turned gray with sorrow.
Flash forward. A year after Jenna suffered her miscarriage, her sadness was replaced by joy. Christmas brought the excitement of a healthy pregnancy—so healthy, in fact, that Jenna gave each of us an assignment.
She was at the point in her pregnancy when the baby was developing the ability to hear, so she asked family members to record messages that she could play for her yet-to-be-born daughter.
Who could refuse such an opportunity? I retreated to a quiet corner and captured this welcome: “Dear, dear child, we are so excited to welcome you into the world. We are waiting for you. Your parents have prepared a place for you. You have grandparents, aunts and uncles ready to shower you with love. We cannot wait to spend time loving you and showing you your wonderful new home.”
When heaven’s treasure became humanity’s gift.
I was only four years old and the large box sat unexplained in the corner of our living room. It had appeared soon after Thanksgiving.
Unlike other boxes near the Christmas tree, this one bore no wrapping paper or ribbons. It had no name, neither of giver nor receiver. It was taped shut, tightly shut, or my brother and I would have opened it. All we could do was inquire about it.
Mom had no explanation. She seemed uninterested. “Just something your dad bought for Christmas,” she said. If anything, she assumed Dad had used the holiday as an excuse to buy himself something. We knew he wanted a new outboard motor for his fishing boat.
On Christmas morning, while my older sisters opened gifts and my brother and I scampered about, playing with our new toys, my mom noticed the still-unopened elephant of a box.
“Jack,” she said, “aren’t you going to open the big present?”
Dad could no more keep a straight face than he could walk to the moon on a moonbeam. He began to smile, his eyebrows arched like little rainbows, and he looked at her with a Santa sort of twinkle. “It’s for you,” was all he said.
My brother and I stopped our play. Dad winked at us. We looked at Mom. She was staring at Dad. We knew something fun was about to happen. Mom stepped toward the box. Dad grabbed the eight-millimeter camera, and we kids scurried over.
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Mom cut the tape on the nondescript box. She reached in and pulled out nothing but tissue paper. One armful after another.
The image in the film, which our family later loved to watch again and again, starts to shake as Dad begins to giggle. “Keep digging, Thelma,” he says from behind the camera.
“What’s in here?” she asks, still pulling out paper. Finally she strikes pay dirt. A box within the box. She opens it to find another box. She opens it, then another box. This happens a couple more times until at last she reaches the smallest of the boxes. A ring box. My brother and I shout, “Open it, Mom!” She beams at the camera. “Jack.”
I didn’t understand the tender significance of the new ring. Not then. But I did learn a lesson that Christmas: A remarkable gift can arrive in an unremarkable package.
One did in Bethlehem. No one expected God to come the way he did. Yet the way he came was every bit as important as the day itself. The manger is the message.
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