Chewymom

Can I make a true confession? Advent season underwhelms me.

There. I said it.

The lighting of the candles, the hanging of the greens, the recitations, even the hymns. Often they leave me rather ho-hum.

Part of it is probably my upbringing. My mother’s birthday was on Christmas day, which is depressing in itself. Two-for-one gifts and spending her birthday in the kitchen. Plus, I believe she suffered from SAD. She was just not very excitable in December. I mean, sure, we were good Presbyterians and did all of the Christmas stuff–made the advent wreath and did the little family readings and lighting of the candle nightly, went to the Service of Lessons and Carols, even rode the Pink Pig at Rich’s in downtown Atlanta. But still, I think as hard as Mom tried, December was stressful for her. (Duh! She was a mom!)

Another part of the issue for me is that it always seems that compared to Easter, the Christmas story is just less moving or something. I mean, Easter - now that is big! Jesus rose from the dead! He died for our sins! And he didn’t even stay dead! That’s big news!!!

But a baby being born to an poor, unwed mother in a stable? Well, not very noteworthy. And not something that tends to draw worship and awe, quite frankly.

Which is probably part of the point.

So I mosey along, caught up in the stresses of the season, barely taking a breath. Rushing to various stores to buy food, gifts, trinkets; fretting over teacher gifts, neighbor gifts, friend gifts; wondering what Santa will bring the kids (and where he is going to get the money!); rushing to chorus practices and concerts, basketball games, school Christmas parties; taking a breath and mourning over the fact that I lost both of my parents awfully close to Christmas.

And then “O Holy Night” comes on. And just as it does every time I hear the song, I am literally almost brought to my knees. Fall on your knees, it exclaims! I catch my breath and really listen to the words. I worship. I, who rarely shed a tear, find my eyes welling up as I listen.

And I am struck by the real message of Christmas. It is huge, just like Easter. Perhaps even more so, because the birth of Jesus marks the beginning of a death march. In a sense, when any of us is born, we begin the march to the grave. But how much more so with Jesus! He left his rightful place as God so that he could limit himself as a human and walk through this life with the sole purpose of death. Not just death because of old age or some crazy accident or illness. But death because without it, we were all going to die. He came to earth with that as his sole goal and intention. Or rather, he came to earth with US as his sole goal and intention.

Not karma. Not you get what’s coming, or you reap what you sow. But you get life. You get relationship with God. You get love from the creator, in spite of yourself and your screwups and mishaps and ill-thoughts and intentions, because God set out with that intention by wrapping himself in the package of a baby, and being born just so that he could die.

And so at his birth, the angels sang.

Fall on your knees! Oh! Hear the angel voices! Oh night divine! Oh night, when Christ was born!

Stop for a minute. Fall on your knees. Worship.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 6th, 2008 at 1:00 am and is filed under Biblical Thinking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.