The Gift of Presence
Christ Community Church Staff Team
Merry Christmas!
Monday is Christmas Day. It is a day that will be filled with presents, food, family, friends, and may even include the making of new traditions. It might be your first Christmas or one among many through the years. And, for many of us, it is also a day that we remember our loved ones who are not celebrating with us this year. The frank reality is that there are many feelings and experiences that come up on a day as significant as Christmas. However, the true blessing of this day has nothing to do with ourselves. Instead, it has everything to do with Jesus.
Christmas is the day that we celebrate and remember the incarnation. That is the moment when God’s Son humbled himself and stepped into our world by taking on our form to express the depth of his love for us and ultimately to make a way for us to be restored to our Father in heaven. Yes, Jesus didn’t have to come as a baby. And yes, Jesus could have skipped the cross altogether and made our salvation possible through some other means. But he didn’t. He instead stepped into our world in the most intimate way possible and established loving presence with humanity. Paul tells us that it was through one man (Adam) that sin and death entered the world. And it is through another man (Jesus) that eternal life is now possible. Jesus taking on human form and giving his life for ours so that we, by faith, could receive eternal life is a true gift of grace. We needed in our desperate situation for God to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. Mercifully, the loving presence of Jesus and the gift of eternal life is available to all! This is the real beauty of Christmas.
So, as you gather and celebrate Christmas traditions, take time to enjoy the loving presence of our Savior. He drew near to us in the most real way possible through the incarnation because we were and are unable to draw near to our Heavenly Father on our own. What a beautiful and gracious truth!
A prayer for presence with Jesus on Christmas:
Lord Jesus, thank you for your abiding and generous presence that was established at your birth. Holy Spirit, would you help me to be present today to the love, grace, and joy afforded to me through Jesus? Jesus, let my heart see more of you today and not the clutter of cultural celebration. Allow me to be present to you today, just as you are present to me. – Amen.