It's been a very busy and festive few days around here. I almost (almost) felt too worn out to enjoy them, as I'm promising to come down with a cold after just reviving from the stomach bug last weekend, as well as our sleep patterns being thrown off. I hope everyone enjoyed their respective families as much as I did. We saw a lot of the Kemper connection this weekend, which is always nice, and I'm hoping to see more of my family this next weekend when my brother comes down. Our schedule was quite busy this year: Christmas Eve service, dinner at Nick's aunt and uncle's house, Christmas morning with my family, Christmas brunch with Nick's family that afternoon, and then finally a quiet night at home. Would it be awful of me to say, though, that my favorite moments were actually the Christmas Eve service? And that, perhaps, it is every year?
It struck me this year how Christmas Eve seems almost more holy than Christmas Day. Christmas Day is a time to be together with family, to enjoy each others' company, good food, good laughs, and the good old gift exchange. It is Christmas Eve that we gather with other believers, pray, remember, reflect, worship, and encourage through the Word, remembering that thousands of years ago, on a lonely night, in a lonely cave, a young woman gave birth to a Son. Christmas Eve we have our services, we sing our Christmas hymns, and we take a moment to remember why we celebrate this season at all.
I am not complaining about this, at all. In fact, I love it. Practically speaking, Christ wasn't actually born on the 25th of December; it was more likely a night in September or October (from what I've read) that he was born. No matter. Since we don't know what day he was actually brought into this world as God Incarnate, then does it really matter what day we celebrate it as long as we do celebrate it? I am ambivalent to the date. Which means Christmas Day is not so sacred to me as Christmastime. And Christmas Eve, gathering in the evening, perhaps on a night similar to the one Mary and Joseph experienced, makes it easier to imagine a Heavenly Host appearing to shepherds on a hillside, to see the star in the night sky guiding the Magi to His home. It was at night that tidings of His incarnation came, and I enjoy taking a winter's evening to remember and honor that.
Of all the things I love about Christmas, and there are many, it is that "tradition" of a Christmas Eve service I love the most. I love gathering with other believers to say, "Christ has come!" It is as joyful and exciting to gather together and say, as on Easter morning, "He is risen!" I love to be able to worship and find joy in the fact that after thousands of years of promise, God's prophecies began to be fulfilled with the birth of a little boy to humble parents, in a humble barn, in a small and humble town in Judea. To sing, to hear the Word, to hear the story told again, and to remember it's proper conclusion: that Christ didn't come as a man simply to identify with us lowly humans, but that He came to die, a humiliating and painful death on the cross, to free us from the bondage of our own sin, and then to raise again to life so that we may have life everlasting. This is the most wondrous thing of all! And I love to keep my Christmas Eves sacred to remember it.
Merry Christmas, everyone. May your Season not only have been filled with happiness and family, but with God's joy and the Love of our Savior.
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