Written by Debbie Meece

“Please help me with Christmas,” I found myself asking God in a panicked prayer, realizing how much needed to be done and how few days there were until December 25th.  Within that very moment I realized what a contradictory prayer I had uttered. With my next breath I asked God to forgive me for getting caught up in the commercialism of Christmas instead of the holiness and glory of the birth of Jesus. I had been thinking about the shopping I had to do, the tree to decorate, and the lights to be strung over the bushes outside.

But Christmas will come this year, just has it has for the last two thousand-plus years, with or without all the worldly trappings associated with it. Christmas is not about me or you. It’s not just about lights and decorations and gifts. It is about Jesus. It is about the fulfillment of God’s promise that Jesus would be born of a virgin in Bethlehem. It is about the coming of God in human form.

On the first Christmas Jesus was born of a virgin in the most humbling of circumstances. Yet kings brought him gifts, and shepherds were told by angels to find  and worship him. There was the miraculous announcement of his birth mixed with the humility of finding that there was no room in the inn for Mary to give birth to her son.
The miraculous and the ordinary all mixed up in one incredible event. That is what Jesus is all about; human enough to feel our pain, yet miraculously holy enough to transcend the ordinary events of our daily lives. It is because of the birth of Jesus,and His coming in human form to a disbelieving world that those who believe in Him can someday stand before God, pure, whole and without sin.  He took on all our sins through His death on the cross. Through His resurrection, He gave us everlasting life in heaven.

Yes, maybe I do need help with Christmas. Maybe you do, too. But even if we don’t manage to get the lights strung over the bushes or the presents wrapped, maybe what we need most is to quiet our hearts long enough to experience the one true gift of Christmas: Emmanuel, God with us in our every moment.