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Messy Christmas
Scripture focus: Matthew 1-2; Luke 1-2
A SIGN UNTO US: MESSY FOCUS
YEEOWWW! Our cat Snigglefritz landed on my back, claws first, drawing blood--while I just stood there washing dishes after supper. Why??
Well, I had been singing at top volume to a tape of our coming Christmas choir program. I was practicing “The Magnificat,” a contemporary version called “Mary’s Song” where the young woman delights to hear the angel’s news she will be pregnant with Jesus (Luke 1:46-55). Every cat’s a critic...
Even today when I sing, our current fluffball Julia gets wide, staring eyes and looks like she’s about to pounce. I could have dismissed the cat attack, or I could have “let this be a sign unto” me that things had to change. I wish I could say I figured this out right away.
Oh, yeah—those days as a new young associate pastor’s wife trying to do Christmas under my own steam come back like a nightmare. You don’t want to see the list of jobs I took on. I don’t want to see the list of jobs I took on. In fact, I just deleted it now. It was too much, and I knew it. Other people told me so, too, including the good senior pastor whose own faithful wife had faced down the same dilemma: of course, you want to serve—of course, you can’t do everything. One mama told me she put a “Just Say NO!” sticker on her phone. It hadn’t been a word in my vocabulary, and it’s taken me years to learn.
When I read today Mary’s song in Luke 1, at first Mary too seems to feel the angel’s news is overwhelming, the job impossible. She is “greatly troubled at his words and wondered...” It WAS impossible—but so was the pregnancy of her much older cousin Elizabeth, soon to be the mother of John. God does these miracles, not us: He makes the virgin Mary pregnant with our savior, gives a baby to this couple past child-bearing age. To me, however, God’s power poured out on Mary does NOT mean “take on another task—He will help you.” No. It DOES mean God says to her and to us: “Here’s the job, the goal, the one focus of your life.”
For me this song of Mary, full of hope and wisdom and insight into the impact of her coming baby’s life, means “the word of God in its fullness” has come to us, “the glorious riches” of a “mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). For her, the focus of life would be the Jesus now forming in her own real body.
For us, the focus must be the formation of Jesus by the Holy Spirit in our lives—his love, his forgiveness, his heart, his perspective, his well of generosity, his witness through us to our world. That’s not everything. That’s focus—on the very most important thing.
I can’t tell you what that means in your own life, what to take on and what to let go this Christmas. Maybe we could make that whole long list (a wish list?) of things we’ve done (or want to, or feel we should do) during Advent and Christmastime. Then, by God's grace, pick the few things that really sharpen our focus on the One who matters. And delete the rest. Advent—our approach to Christmas, and Immanuel’s coming to us—can be a great time to consider what’s truly important to do and be as Jesus’ people.
We won’t always get it right, but over time, if we're open, He will form in us his life and character. Our souls can still sing (despite the cat critics), and we can be his magnifying glass, enlarging on the news that Christ is in us, the hope of glory.
Dear Father, come to us in our mess and confusion and blurry focus. Let us see the One, the most important love of our lives coming to us in a new way this Advent and Christmas. Enable us to long for "Christ in us, the hope of glory." Amen.
Wendy Johnson
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