May all your Christmases be white

This really is the most wonderful time of the year. Lights everywhere (especially here at DBU), hot chocolate, gathering with family and friends, and in the case of Texas, winter drizzle blanketing the ground. But I think this time of year is wonderful for a different reason.

It's about a young girl, maybe 12 or 13 years old, engaged to be married to a carpenter, who gets a surprise visit from an angel with what would seem like bad news. He tells her that she's going to be impregnated by the Holy Spirit even though she's never been with a man, and this little baby is going to be the promised Messiah. Her life is going to change drastically. Because of the culture of the day, she is going to be vilified, outcast, scorned. Everyone around her thinks she couldn't wait. And, speaking as a woman, I know all these things ran circles around her mind. But she didn't freak out like the rest of us would. She simply said, "I am the Lord's servant. Let it be done to me just as you have said." Think about the implications of her acceptance of this fate. She would be branded an adulteress. Jesus might be branded, for lack of a more acceptable term, a bastard son. But she quietly and humbly accepted that this was God's will for her.

It's about a young man, whom the Bible calls "righteous." He's just a carpenter, a poor man, trying to scratch out a living for himself and his new wife. But all that falls apart when she turns up pregnant and says that the baby is from God. What's a guy supposed to think? So he makes the toughest decision of his life. He's going to divorce her, without causing her any public disgrace. (By the way, that's love.) With this in mind, one night he falls asleep, just like normal. But this night is anything but normal. An angel appears to him and tells him that it really is okay to take Mary as his wife. This child within her really was conceived by the Holy Spirit. And what's more, the angel tells her that this child will save His people from their sins. And this young man gets up and does exactly what the angel says. Talk about faith. Joseph was probably in training to be a rabbi, and yet he "throws" it all away. In taking Mary as his wife, he basically said that Jesus really was his son, and that they couldn't wait until the marriage ceremony. He would be just as ostricized as Mary. He gave up his dreams so that he could raise a little child that wasn't biologically his.

It's about another Father. This one could easily see the state of the world. His creation, drowning in their sins, desperately looking for someone to save them from themselves. This Father had lovingly fashioned them out of dirt, knowing that one day they would choose their own selfish desires over Him. And now, because He deemed these fallen creatures so special, He sent His own Son to become one of them.

It's about a baby, born perfect into a sinful world. This tiny baby was the ruler of the entire universe, sitting in glory and might in heaven, one with His Father. This little child had fashioned the world with His hands, had breathed life into humanity, had led the people of Israel out of Egypt. He was there in the beginning. He was with God, and He was God. And yet, because of His strange love for these murdering and conniving creatures, He laid aside the crown that He alone deserved, wrapped Himself in their flesh, and stepped down from His throne to be born into a world that would reject Him and His love. He was willing to make this sacrifice to save the most unworthy people from imminent death. All this, simply because He didn't want to be separated from them for all eternity.

This is why this season is so wonderful. Two thousand years ago, the world heaved and groaned with the expectation of a savior, a military ruler who would conquer the world and bring peace. But they missed His coming, because He came in the tiniest of packages, born into poverty instead of the palace He deserved, born strictly for the purpose of dying for an unworthy world, born to rejection and ridicule. Just as a man brought death into the world, a Man had to bring eternal life. This is why we celebrate this season: Faith in God's promise, hope in His providence, and sacrificial love that conquers even the darkest of sin.