Finding Christmas

What a strange year 2020 has been!

Prior to the beginning of this year, I believe many of us had plans, hopes, and resolutions which quickly faded as the calendar turned to March. It has been a year like no other. We have learned to speak a whole new language as the Coronavirus quickly took over all the media outlets, the shelves in the toilet paper aisle in the store, and how we do business and treat our fellow man in general.

I learned a whole lot of new terminology that didn’t exist previously in my vocabulary. Prior to 2020, I would have thought “what’s app” was a greeting between friends….zoom was how fast I could get my car to accelerate…Corona was a beer….bandanas and masks were for cowboys, bank robbers, and motorcyclists…isolation was how we felt when we felt like we had no friends or when we talked about a disease like tuberculosis. And finally, the term “Zoom School” in my day might have described my driver’s education class.

Some of us went from having a jam-packed social calendar to our biggest date being a trip to the grocery store to find toilet paper and wipes. Or, if we chose the route of total shielding, we were excited when the groceries or Amazon person delivered to our homes. Many of us had to work from home, or learn to perform our jobs with masks and a shield between us and the people we serve. We had to rediscover the people who share our DNA, those who live under our roofs–the very people who bear the same last name as us. And that may have proved most challenging of all.

I am not going to ask you all how you are doing with this year. If you want my opinion, this year has been awkward and very trying, to say the least. I may or may not have done well, for example, of becoming “co-worker” with my husband, as both of us were forced to work from home with no preparation. However, I may have become better at picking up the phone and calling a friend; whereas before I did not enjoy talking on the phone over texting. I should have a very clean house after being stuck here for months on end, but I do not. Instead I find myself with a zillion unfinished projects and little mind to work on them. I often felt imprisoned, as I have had to watch my mother’s health fading this year from afar as she lives several states away.

But I made new friends, who have taught me new things about life. That was refreshing, and helped my sanity. Sometimes I was counseled by my friends with a word from the Lord to help me through a rough patch. Other times I was able to return the favor, hopefully when it was needed most.

And in all of it the Lord has been near to me, and I have had to draw near to Him like never before. I have waffled back and forth over the Covid19 virus and how it could harm me because I have blood cancer. Sometimes I just didn’t care. I actually wanted to catch it and get it over with. Other times, after hearing the horror stories, I just wanted to run and hide.

So it is no wonder that I am trying to find Christmas this year, in a way like never before. You may believe that for a Christian like myself that faith always comes naturally. It actually does not. One of the most difficult Bible passages for me is Hebrews 11:1, which says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” It seems like such a simple phrase and of all the things to memorize, I should have it memorized, but it confounds me.

“What do You mean, Lord, that faith is believing in something I am hoping for, something I cannot YET see? I want it now!”

Yet, as He continues to give me breath in my lungs and I wake up day after day in the middle of a pandemic, saying, “What day is today?”, He says, “Be patient, my child. I still have things to show you here on this earth.”

God is the Master of letting things brew…causing events and circumstances to play out like a dramatic movie that keeps us on the edge of our seats until the very end. He knows how to use life events to teach us how to handle suffering. He is shaping us with each and every day. He is making us a masterpiece.

What does Christmas mean to you? And is it different this year compared to the others? Perhaps the traditions on which we have relied for so long are in the toilet this year, as we try to figure out how to celebrate in the same little box we have been living in for over nine months. How can it hold any meaning, you ask?

It started subtly in the Garden of Eden in the first Bible story with a guy and a gal, a snake and a piece of fruit. The first woman and man fell from Grace. God couldn’t be around them due to their rebellious attitudes, so He banished them from His paradise but right before He did that, He promised to provide the remedy.

But He made them wait. From Genesis to Malachi, zillions of people named in the Old Testament, clinging to faith in something that they could not see.

Finally, after all those years, all those generations of people waiting for the promise, God delivered. And He did it in the strangest of ways!

He sent a heralding angel to announce the birth of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, first to some shepherds watching their sheep nearby in a field.

And the angel said unto them, “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.”

This was a remarkable thing because these shepherds were virtually nobody, but they were invited first to meet the Messiah Jesus. And they obeyed, even though they had very little information to go by.

They simply believed.

They could have said, “We are busy right now, but we will come as soon as we can.” In fact, going to meet Jesus was a whole lot of work for them. They had to bring all those sleepy sheep with them, most likely.

So now, we are perhaps even more busy than those shepherds were, even though our lives a bit simpler than a year ago! If they hadn’t gone to “finding Christmas” they would have missed out. When they left that holy scene: Joseph, Mary, and Jesus in nothing more than a lean-to, they returned to their ordinary lives, “glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.” (Luke 2:20)

And interestingly enough, we do not read that they abandoned their jobs and became multi-millionaires because their lives were so amazingly changed.

But they were, in fact, changed. Inside. They had encountered the most Holy. They had seen God who had come to earth as a man. They didn’t need Ph d’s to know that the baby wrapped in scraps of fabric and placed in a feeding trough was destined to something far more spectacular than anything they could imagine.

They were called. They went quickly.

They saw. They believed.

This Christmas, I want to humble myself. I want to take the time to drop what I am doing and make haste to where the babe lays in a manger and celebrate that what the angels heralded that sovereign night has come to pass. For that baby did not stay just a baby. He grew up as God-man. He taught many people about how to obtain salvation. He said, “Tear this temple down and I will rebuild it in three days” and He put His money where His mouth was. He was arrested for saying He was God, and died a cruel punishment that was meant for criminals on a rough-hewn cross. He was buried. And just like He promised, He rose again to show all that He is God on the third day. And He did what none of us could do. He took the punishment for each one of us so we can make a choice. We can choose to follow Him and be guaranteed everlasting life in heaven.

This is the Tiding of Great Joy!

It is what makes faith come alive. It is the Hope that beats all other hope. And is what I’m celebrating this Christmas: that there is more to this life than what we presently see; that there is a master plan for my life, and a Great God who orchestrates all of it; that I can believe and hope in something that I cannot yet see. That I can find Christmas right where it has always been, in that silent night, o holy night…