The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas (20 page)

Find two twigs today and construct a cross out of the bits of wood tied together with a piece of red string. Set your cross in a windowsill for you and all the world to see. Give thanks to God with us, who rebuilds us.

He, whom no infinitudes can hold, is contained within infant’s age, and infant’s form. Can it be, that the great “I am that I am” shrinks into our flesh? . . . What self-denial, what self-abasement, what self-emptying is here!

HENRY LAW

How does your perspective change on the hurry and the worry when you remember that God is with you?

What does it mean to you that God came in the form of an infant, with human skin?

What around you is broken and in need of saving? Ask God to restore and redeem any broken relationships and the broken places in your heart.

She . . . laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them.

LUKE 2:7

At that time the Roman emperor, Augustus, decreed that a census should be taken throughout the Roman Empire. (This was the first census taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria.) All returned to their own ancestral towns to register for this census. And because Joseph was a descendant of King David, he had to go to Bethlehem in Judea, David’s ancient home. He traveled there from the village of Nazareth in Galilee. He took with him Mary, his fiancée, who was now obviously pregnant.

And while they were there, the time came for her baby to be born. She gave birth to her first child, a son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them.

LUKE 2:1-7

The time came. . . .

The time came quiet. . . .

All the glory had been left in heaven.

And the face of God turns one last time in the waters of the womb, and the membrane breaks and the amniotic fluid leaks and the skin of God slips naked and small and holy into hands He made.

This birth of God —who can find words? This defies words.

This birth of God —this incites war.

This night, under the cover of darkness, behind the velvet curtain of silent stars —the agonies of redemption bear down loud.

This night, in the deep of the heights, as the book of Revelation tells it —and we have a revelation of all hell breaking loose and racing God to get under our skin, of an all-out cosmic war spinning across space, of the King of the forces of good driving a daring raid right into the flank of the beast who is a crimson gash tearing the waiting sky.

The Nativity of this night is a brutality of heaven and earth.

In the heavenlies, according to the Nativity of Revelation, the child breeches, the beast lunges, and our eyes flash away, too terrified to witness evil devouring holiness and our one last hope.

All of earth holds its desperate, wild breath.

And then, at the last possible moment of all this impossible, the Infant is seized and thrust to the throne. The Child lives! Rescue is certain! And all of hell makes one last lunge, clashes desperate, the dark horde of evil wrestling Michael and the heavenly host —and then it’s over. Satan falls like lightning from heaven, falls out of the sky in a heap.

And now over Bethlehem, in the Nativity according to Luke, the star hangs high, victorious on a silent night, a holy night.

Now all is calm.

God comes. . . .

God comes quiet. . . .

This night a battle has been waged and won for you. Love had to come back for you. Love had to get to you. The Love that has been coming for you since the beginning —He slays dragons for you. This is the truest love story of history, and it’s His-Story, and it’s for you. All the other fairy-tale love stories only echo your yearning for this truest, realest one —this one that has its beginning before the beginning of time. This night, you on this visited planet, your rescue is here. You can breathe.

Your God extends now on straw.

He lays Himself down in your mire.

He unfolds Himself in the stench you want to hide, in that mess that is your impossible, in the mucked straw you don’t want anyone to know.

Rejected at the inn, holy God comes in small to where you feel rejected and small. God is with you now. Wherever you are —in a soundless cry or hidden brokenness or in your ache —God always wants to be with you. You are not ever left alone in this. We are never left alone in this; God is with us.

This is Love you can’t comprehend. You can only feel and touch this kind. There, in the place where you feel rejected, you can be touched by God. There, in the places you feel small, you can touch God. He came in the flesh.

Come kneel close.

Let the warm breath of heaven fall on you.

God waits to be held.

God waits for you to draw close.

Grace is weightless.

God comes as a Babe because grace is weightless.

On a chilled night under stars, there is no grand mass of people whose efforts pry the stars into place. In an obscure caved barn, down some backstreet of Bethlehem, there is no great host whose good works unlatch heaven and
impress God into coming. Tonight, at the foot of the cradle of Christ, like at the foot of the Cross of Christ, there are no big people —no powerful, no proud. Tonight there are only those who tramp to the manger with nothing; there are only the manger tramps, the men who lay down all the self-made, the women who lay down all the self-sufficiency, the children who lay down all the wants. We, the manger tramps, who kneel where thrones tremble and demons fall and the self-made crumble and the self-righteous weep.

Tonight there are only the manger tramps, who tramp in with all our poverty of spirit . . . so there can be an abundance of God.

And the bulk of all your worn shreds slip off the weariness of your back.

You have tried to polish enough for Him with these rags. You have tried to patch together so much for Him. You have tried to produce too much for Him with these rags.

And you —we —who are the manger tramps see it tonight, what He’s written in red on all our filthy rags:
But I did it for love.

All of conquered heaven and grateful earth echo and throb tonight with the heart cry of the God-Child:
I did it for love.

What can all the manger tramps do but wrap the vulnerable God in strips of our bare, broken hearts so He can lodge in the intimacy of us?

The greatest Gift laid into our empty hands. . . .

Grace is weightless.

Even the winning stars singing it over the manger tramps tonight.

Put on your shoes and go for a walk today. Sing a Christmas carol out loud. Go into all of the world and tell one person about the greatest Gift and how He loves.

Christmas is fast approaching. And now that Christ has aroused our seasonal expectations, he’ll soon fulfill them all!

SAINT AUGUSTINE