Christmas is the anticipated time of year when family members gather from different corners of the country and beyond to celebrate the best of what we hold dear in our relationships. Yet for some, it can also represent the ominous presence of past hurts and even current relational pain, making Christmas depressing or lonely.
Dallas and I see Christmas as a great opportunity to celebrate the gift of family. All three of our boys will come home and join us in the parade of Christmas celebrations. Dallas and I are blessed to have parents who are flexible when we can show up for Christmas so we take turns from year to year who we are with on Christmas Day but over a three day period we will be in three different homes praying, eating, telling stories, laughing and exchanging gifts. One of our favorite Christmas traditions is to huddle up like we used to when the boys were small and watch a movie together. Christmas Vacation is the annual movie of choice on Christmas Eve but in the days to come we will watch one or two others. Last year we watched the DVD “He’s Just Not That Into You.” The movie is about a young single woman named Gigi who is caught up in the cycle of superficial serial dating. Gigi repeatedly misreads comments and actions from her male dates as authentic interests. After each date, which tends to culminate in a brief bedroom encounter, Gigi returns home and obsessively sits by the phone, waiting for the call that never comes.
Everyone wants to know that he or she is important to someone. Remember how kids passed notes back and forth in grade school? “I like you. Do you like me” Check yes, no or maybe.” That’s because God created us for intimate, authentic relationships.
Unfortunately, we are all capable of compromising our most fundamental beliefs to make such intimate connections. Why else do people stay in abusive relationships or commit to others who have conflicting belief structures?
At some time in our lives, each of us will experience rejection. Whether we are young or old, rejection is painful. Whether it be on the school playground, the board room or the bed room, rejection makes a huge imprint in our development as persons. Is it any wonder that we learn early on to portray ourselves as being someone other than who we really are and create layers of emotional defenses to protect ourselves from relational pain?
Worse, our esteem deficiencies carry over into our relationships with God. Most of us have no problem believing in God but we struggling being secure of God’s belief in us. Do you ever think…”How can God believe in me? How could God ever possibly desire me?”… Most of us are pretty adept at hiding our imperfections and deficiencies from others while being fully aware that we can’t hide them from God.
So what do we do? Like Adam and Eve we run and hide from the sound of God’s approaching footsteps because we are ashamed. We create an emotional barrier between us and God. God is not emotionally detached or running from us. We run away from God.
Christmas is the heralding of God who comes to be with us. God is the one who pursues us. The Incarnation is the revelation of God’s scandalous love affair with humanity! Father God sends Jesus to invite us to come home for the family celebration!
One of the most passionate illustrations of God’s love affair with humanity is in the book of Hosea. God’s chosen people, Israel, had wandered from the Lord. Hosea described their wandering as the worse kind of infidelity and compared it to prostitution. God was saying “cheating” on him was killing the relationship. Jesus himself said…”You can’t have two lovers. You will always favor one over the other.” (Matthew 6:24)
But God demonstrates his unrelenting love for Israel by telling Hosea to go and marry a wife of “whoredom” and have children of “whoredom.” Can you imagine marrying someone you knew would be unfaithful and spending the rest of your life wondering if your children were really your own? Who would knowingly set themselves up for such a life of hell? God.
God’s love is not rational. God’s love makes no sense. Thank goodness beauty is in the eye of the beholder and when God looks at you, God’s heart pounds like a mom witnessing her son walk through the door at Christmas even though he has just spent days in jail for some heinous crime. And when that daughter shows up, the Father smiles from ear to ear even though she spurned his values and is living as a concubine with an ungodly man. That is what you call crazy, scandalous love.
And that is what you call Christmas. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” (John 3:16) I don’t know how you are being unfaithful to God or how far away you have drifted, but this I do know, with a scandalous love God is relentlessly pursuing, inviting you through his Son to come home, come home for Christmas.
Christmas Eve Worship
3:00 Family Friendly
5:00 Contemporary7:00 Traditional
Rick
