included

Sometimes I lose sight of exactly how fundamental Christmas is. At the basis of everything, all my successes and failures, hopes and disappointments, adventures and disasters – all of the events and emotions that have made up my five-plus decades so far – is this one singular event. Without Christmas, there is no hope, and no point to any of it.

Paul explained it pretty well in Galatians 3:23-25. After describing how faith in Jesus changed the law, he wrote: “Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.”

Those are some dramatic words that describe a frightening truth – that without Jesus we’re so shackled by sin and Satan that we could just as well be in a jail cell. The Old Testament law addressed a grim truth, that there is no way for people to pay the blood debt we owe God. Under the Old Testament law, we’re all on death row.

But then, Christmas. Everything changed – everything! Under the Old Testament law I wouldn’t even have been allowed in church. The covenant was for descendants of Father Abraham, not Grandpa Steggerda.

But look at the next few verses, 26-29: “So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”

Before Christmas, I was on the outside looking in. I was the little kid with his nose pressed to the glass, watching the party inside. All the promises of God, all the grace of the covenant, wasn’t for people like me. And then, the God-man Jesus in a short life and horrible death changed my entire future. From that point on, it’s all mine – a wealth of gifts!

Where do I lose that part of Christmas? To really appreciate the birth of the child King requires a sense of the hopelessness of life without him. That consuming longing that gnawed like hunger for the Israelites eventually subsided, sated by more worldly things, until when the time came only a handful of Simeons and Annas still yearned for the Messiah. Why do I let that happen to me as I looked forward to Jesus’ return? How does Christmas become so benign and ordinary?

I want to recover that sense of desperate longing. Watch and wait.