God Has Made Us Alive in Christ --Paul, Eph. 2.5

There are many good things about the way we Americans celebrate Christmas—parties, Christmas cards, gift giving, light shows, trimming the tree, decking the halls, Christmas music, sharing goodies. During the Christmas season, many corporations slow down, people cheer up; Scrooges and Grinches are unwelcome.

Christians need not feel guilty about taking part in our cultural traditions. There’s nothing bad about waking up on Christmas morning and delighting in the materializing of our Christmas lists, watching our favorite Christmas movies and appreciating the warm fuzzies they produce, enjoying egg nog, or gathering with the people we care the most about.

However, it is precisely because our Christmas traditions are so inviting, pleasurable, and comfortable that we can so easily lose sight of the reason for the season, this story fraught with intensity—a young couple giving birth in a barn, later fleeing into exile from a death threat to their baby. To celebrate that story is to celebrate Jesus vulnerably taking on humanity and inviting us into his self-sacrificing lifestyle. Given the choice between the comfort of traditional Christmas cheer and the discomfort of embracing the lifestyle of Jesus, could it be that we gravitate to our Christmas gifts to satisfy our desires? To our family gatherings to anchor our sense of security? To the compartmentalization of our pressures to give us peace? Is it also possible that to do so might prevent us from discovering the satisfaction of Jesus’s beauty, the soul-anchoring our family connection with Him affords, and the peace that He gives in the midst of pressure?

Paul wanted the Ephesian church to grasp this glorious grace of Jesus by saying, God, rich in mercy, has made us alive with Christ (Eph 2.5) and his presence can bring hope, strength and wisdom to our broken human condition…He has become our peace (Eph. 2.15) and we have been strengthened with power through the Spirit in our inner beings, so rooted and grounded in love that we may have power together with all God’s people being filled with the measure of all the fullness of God (Eph. 3. 14-19 paraphrased).

Of course, finding our sense of hope, peace, joy and love in Christ instead of in our cheery Christmas traditions is not simple or easy. We take on those soul-conditions slowly, at best. It requires training or a re-training, that is, learning new ways of thinking about and being in the world as citizens of God’s kingdom filled with all the fullness of God. Observing Advent is a waiting practice that can be a valuable training discipline. The waiting is two-fold. We wait for His second coming—the glorious return of Jesus to judge evil and fully establish His rule and reign on earth—and we wait for Jesus to make His presence known to us in the, often challenging, here and now.

I hope this Christmas season that you will engage with Christians around the world who have found the glories of Jesus a reason to celebrate Advent by providing space for you to connect with the Christ who has made you fully alive in Himself.