Pastor Stan Scripps, Graafschap CRC | The space shuttle is lifting off today to go into orbit around the earth. It seems there are some things to fix on the international space station and someone has to do it. The ever-present news reporters interviewed one of the pilots and asked how they felt about being in space over the holiday season. He said, “It doesn’t bother me. I don’t have to have turkey on Thanksgiving or Christmas or whatever. This is my job and I have to do it whatever the season.”
Well, he is a man on a mission. But the reporter asked that question because for most of us it is important to be home for the holidays, especially Christmas. We enter the Christmas season full of memories of Christmas past. Those memories bring with them a hope to rekindle good times again this year; words like rest, warmth, laughter and good comfort all come to the surface and we’ve often found those things at home. So the season finds people on earth traveling home, hoping not to spend the night at O’Hare airport or the days in bed with the flu, thanks to all this close contact. Newly weds and not-so-newly weds find themselves rushing from his parents to her parents. Kids find themselves having to perform and rehearse. We go shopping downtown, entering the smaller shops and smelling the air and taking in all the decorations, carefully selected to invite our good feelings and open our purses and wallets. The first semi trucks carrying Christmas trees have already thundered through Holland on southbound US 31. Ships carrying containers from China to unload onto other semi trucks have been coming to our harbors and from there to our loading docks. It is all part of the commercial side of Christmas.
But there is something alive at the core of this for believers in Christ. It isn’t just vanity and chasing after the wind. There is a place of stillness, a delicious mystery that, like a great poem, wears well. It gets better each time we visit this mystery that lies delightfully beyond the grasp of commercial marketing. It can’t be exploited by those who don’t believe. They don’t get it; more’s the pity. Yet it isn’t with any pride that we rejoice in the mystery. It is with deep and humble reverence that we rest peacefully. God made His home with us. That is Christmas.
Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home ..... as your wife... because what is conceived IN her is from the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 1:20).
That was Christmas already, you might say. Jesus was already alive, living in Mary. He was the Word made flesh. For the rest, it would be a matter of waiting a while for the Day of the Lord to come. The birthday had to come sometime. Now the day for us to be born again has come.
Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great; He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory! (I Timothy 3:16).
In the meantime we wait. But we wait in the presence of the mystery of God with us. Jesus came on a mission. So also believers are men and women on a mission. When it is finished, we will go home for the first time. So the idea of home here on earth is not so much a matter of where we are for Christmas or what we buy for Christmas as it is a matter of who we are all the time. It is Christ in us that is our hope of glory. So the main thing is not how I feel, but who I am toward the Lord and toward others, especially strangers. Jesus became homeless so that all may feel at home.
Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 10:06AM