Expecting Christmas
When an Angel came and announced to Mary that her world would be turned upside down and shaken until all the old gum wrappers at the bottom of her purse were flying in the wind, her response was, “Let it be to me as you have said.” Did she have any idea what to expect when she uttered these words? The chaos, the mess, the unknown of bearing a child whom she had not planned and conceived by human means: Mary welcomes it all.
Mary welcomed Jesus into the world in the midst of filing for taxes while crashing for the night in a strangers garage…. Mary never prepared the perfect nursery or crafted a glittering birth announcement. Besides, how could you beat angel choirs? But Mary sang anyway. She lifted up her voice and said, “My soul magnifies The Lord and my spirit rejoices with God my savior”.
The expectancy of Mary was never about her experience of a “perfect Christmas” and it certainly was not about her perception among her family and peers. She was lost in the true wonder and awe of receiving Christ. Anyway, who needs to worry about impressing the neighbors when you are welcoming the same Lord who has “brought down rulers from their thrones and lifted up the humble?”
In many homes women bear the expectation of creating magical Christmas moments … but these expectations, like the increasing expectations of domestic life, might be doing more harm to women and their families and perhaps to the body of Christ, than they do to engrain the story of Christ’s birth. I’m not trying to be a Christmas scrooge! I love making Christmas cookies with my kids. I love hosting parties and opening my home to our church. But especially at Christmas I need to be very aware of the difference between cultivating an expectancy of the celebration of Christ’s birth and chasing after expectations of fictitious women and … visions of sugar plums….
What I really need is to expect nothing but the coming of the Lord. I need to take my cues from Mary, who while holding her newborn son surrounded by hay and animal excrement, letting her world be carried away with the wind and the gum wrappers, “pondered all these things in her heart.”
Church, friends, family – and Christians in general if it’s not too much to ask – with just a few days left till Christmas, can we agree to expect something more, much more than moments of magic under a beautiful tree…? Let’s expect Christ to interrupt our lives and our homes. Let’s join Mary, singing our praises to the God who comes in flesh and humbles our aspirations of perfection. Let’s throw our expectations to the wind and be carried away in true expectancy as we say …
Come, Lord Jesus. Amen.
From http://www.shawnasongergaines.com (2014)
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