Thoughts on Christmas

As I grow older, have babies of my own and grow in my knowledge and love of God's word, my thoughts on Christmas have changed. Some of this is influenced also by books I read and songs I hear. One song, Labor of Love by Andrew Peterson, moves me to tears every time I hear it. As a child, being innocent, as all children should be, I, of course, did not have a clue what Mary was going through. I just looked at nativity scenes that showed a woman who looked to be in her 30's kneeling and praying to a fat baby in a very clean manger with a halo around his head and thought that must have been what it looked like, right? Not even close. She was a teenage who had been through a traumatic 9 months, traveled a long journey with her new husband, given birth to her first child in a barn on some smelly hay with an audience of livestock. She was probably in terrible pain, bloody, cold, filthy, scared out of her mind and no clue what to do. Then she has this baby who is the son of God but he looks just like any other baby. There was no earthquake, no royalty, no purple robe to wrap him in, just an occasional moo and neigh. What must she have been thinking? The promised child. The one she and her people had been waiting for for hundreds of years to save them and here they are in a barn, in the dark, in a small town. And who should show up to see the baby but some smelly shepherds saying some angels had told them to come. Shepherds, the riff-raff of society. THAT is who God sent his choir of angels to to proclaim that the Messiah had come. Not to a palace, not to a large city to tell hundreds of people. No, to some shepherds on a hillside in the middle of the night. Think about it. The whole thing is preposterous. BUT this was the grand plan of God put in place before the stars that gave them light that night had even been created. What a picture the whole thing makes because I can see myself so clearly in it. I am the smelly stable, the scared girl, the riff - raff shepherds. I am the one He came to redeem. And He wasn't just any baby, He was "the maker of the moon, the Author of the faith that could make the mountains move." He was the Son of God who grew into a man who hung on the cross in terrible pain, bloody, cold and filthy. But unlike his mother He knew exactly what he was doing. All praise to God with His crazy plan to save riff-raff like me.