It's Not Your Birthday!

I wonder how many others God went to before getting Mary to birth His son to save mankind.  Think about it.  This young girl, probably in her early teens, was asked to carry this child who would be conceived without her having sex with a man when she was already engaged.  She would be expected to risk death by stoning as a result for that adultery.  Now that would be pretty weird to most women, and I suspect most would say “huh-uh Mr. Angel, I think I’ll take a pass on this one…but good luck with your search for a virgin though, and have a nice day.”  I can see what Catholics must feel in their veneration of Mary.  She must have been an amazing woman.  And then there’s this business of having a child in a stable.  Women died in childbirth back then under the best of circumstances.  Then there is that long trip on foot over the mountains for more than a week to get from Nazareth to Bethlehem…I thought it was a frightening and enormous chore just to get my wife to a real hospital 45 minutes away.

So here we are on Christmas morning opening our presents like it was our birthday and often just focusing on the value of all the material wealth we strive and dream to accumulate.  We don’t really think about Mary and Joseph and Jesus.  We think about things like the Polar Express and the Grinch.  Christmas has become a holiday about Santa Claus and presents to most people.  We can’t even say “Merry Christmas” without the politically correct police coming down on us.  WalMart won’t even let me inside the store to ring the bell for the Salvation Army (I have to stand on the curb outside) and their clerks aren’t allowed to say “Merry Christmas.”  The bulk of our merchandizing capitalist economy relies on the sales that occur in the last 30 days of our year.  And yet the real gift of Christmas is not those pretty boxes wrapped under the tree, but rather the gift of eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ.  What an incredible Christmas gift of love that is for us…and it is totally free!  You won’t be getting credit card bills on it for months, you don’t have to put it on lay-away.  It’s there, right now.  Paid up in full.

Yesterday my fire station crew responded to a three-car crash that killed one driver.  I sit here and wonder this Christmas morning, “did he know Jesus as his savior?”  Do you?  Life turns on an instant.  It is unpredictable. There is no guarantee, and for sure you will come to that reckoning with God at some point sooner or later.

Be ready.