Pondering Christmas

As I see it…

Pondering the pleasantries of the season…

The angelic prompting to praise still stands: “Glory to God in the highest…” Is it possible with everything else that steals our attention during this season that somehow God has been overlooked? After all, it is his Son whose birth is being celebrated. Can our eyes be lifted above the manger, above Mary and Joseph, above the shepherd clad hillside, above the sprinkled skyline of villages and cities and raise them to the third heaven? How honored will our heavenly Father be at the birthday celebration of his Son, even among those “guests” who genuinely adore the Babe in the manger? Why has God slipped to second place at the Christmas season?

Marveling at majesties in this season…

There have not been many “mystics” in the Christian faith down through the ages. But we can be grateful for those few who have been part of our church’s history. The unknown fourteenth century author of the work, Cloud of the Unknowing, invites us to compare our sinfulness with God’s graciousness and thus improve our attempt at humility. He writes, Two things cause humility. One is the degradation, wretchedness, and weakness of man to which by sin he has fallen: he ought to be aware of this…no matter how holy he may be. The other is the superabundant love and worth of God in himself: gazing on which all of nature trembles, all scholars are fools, all saints and angels blind. An objective soul-searching of who we really are before God should cause us to be all the more grateful for the sinless Christ who has incarnated God to us. After all, our sinfulness desperately needs his graciousness. Yet another reason for believers to greet each other at this season with Merry Christmas!

Quieting our quandaries at this season…

With your soul’s query and your mind’s sanctified imagination, have you ever looked carefully at the face of the Babe in the manger? Can you see through your intense peering the reflected face of God? Is your heart able to ponder the immenseness of God’s love to us in the gift of his Son? That “superabundant love and worth of God” which has faded in its glory because we have failed to look at Christmas with eyes of faith and humility; that humility which enables us to say, “Glory to God in the highest!”