The Magic of Christmas...

Christmas is coming and the geese are getting fat, please put a penny in the old man's hat.... I have no idea why but from the time I was a little girl everytime someone says Christmas is coming I think of this song. My Mother used to sing it to me when I was young and I guess it just stuck. Today as I finished up my shopping and was checking out I heard a lady say to no one in particular "Christmas is coming but I am so not ready." and the sales clerk smiled and said " yes, I need some of that Christmas magic Santa uses so I can get everything on my list done, but it hasn't happened yet." I chuckled to myself and thought how can you not be ready? I am always ready for Christmas, it is my favorite holiday. I understand that she meant she still had things to buy and things to bake and things to wrap and in that sense I am not ready either, but to me being ready is not about any of those things, being ready is about anticipation, it is about the excitement that Christmas brings.
 Christmas magic, it is not just the stuff of fairy tales and it isn't just for Santa either. Christmas has a feel all it's own, an excitement that surrounds it, the anticipation, it creates an atmosphere that could truly be described as magical.
Can you feel it? The magic of Christmas, the reason it is so exciting? and it isn't this old materialistic world of red suits and green money.  The magic or spirit of Christmas isn't about the colorful packages, the ribbons and bows, the shopping, or even the activities. It isn't a big fat man in red suit bringing gifts that creates that special intensity, urgency, or magic as some like to refer to it.
The magic of Christmas is about a God that is so big the universe can't contain Him making himself so small that an animal food trough was enough to cradle Him. The magic of Christmas comes in the form of a crying, helpless, cold, shivering, hungry baby that made a King shake in fear, so fearful in fact, that he ordered every baby in the kingdom to be killed just to try and stop it. The baby that caused wise astrologers to leave their homes and families and comfort to set out on foot, not really knowing where it would lead or how long it would take to get there, to follow a star, with nothing but a hope that they would get a glimpse of salvation.
Now, I know that Christ wasn't really born on December 25, I know that there was not snow on the ground and that the stable wasn't a cute warm barn with animals silently sleeping around them and baby Jesus wrapped up sweetly smiling in the wooden manger. A tiny town, Bethlehem, not really known for anything special, a town that in today's time would be off the grid, not found by any GPS, just a little passing through kind of a town, but there was one day in History that it was full, full of people, full of activity, full of God. One day in time that would forever change little Bethlehem. Mary was a just a teenager, inexperienced, never been in labor, never had a baby to care for, more than likely had never left home before now, yet here she was, chosen by God to give birth to the Savior of mankind. I would love to have been able to know Mary, to know this girl who at a very young age had already found favor with God, so that He chose her out of all the women of the world, to be the Mother of Christ. Mary was in pain, she had just traveled days, on foot and maybe a donkey ( although I don't think the Bible actually mentions her riding on an animal) in labor. I have been in labor, it is not fun, and I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like with no medicine, no doctor, no midwife, and traveling on foot for hours, days....I am almost positive that Mary was not smiling when they arrived in Bethlehem.  I can picture her tired, weary, crying, and then there was Joseph...Joseph, a first time husband and a first time Father, out on his own trying to provide for his brand new family. I see him banging frantically on doors asking for a place for them to sleep, going from one house to another, maybe a little panicked at the thought of his wife in labor and no rooms in town to lay their heads. Joseph, desperate, begging for a place for his wife to rest, so that when a man offered up his cattle cave, Joseph took it without hesitation. Anywhere was better than nowhere. The barn was more than likely a cave, a cold, dark, maybe a little candle light, damp, smelly cave, carved out of the side of a mountain. The animals were probably loud and confused by this human family nesting down in their home.  That manger trough, more likely made of stone than wood, carved out to hold the hay and straw. It was hard, cold, and I am sure it didn't smell nice. I have only small house animals and their food bowls and bedding areas smell so I can only guess what that cave smelled like.  Sometime in the night, in that crowded, dirty, stable in that busy little tiny town, the Light of the World entered the darkness in the most humble of ways... naked, hungry, small, and weak...a baby crying out. Shepherds, the lowest of the low, the ones no one thought much about in town, those shepherds always out in the fields, smelly, dirty, unkempt. They spent days at a time camping out in those fields, outside of town, the fringes of society, those lowly shepherds who lay forgotten on the ground, of course God always thinks of the lowest first, so unlike us. God chose to make His birth announcement to the least of us first, and what an announcement it was. A sky full of angelic glory, a bright light in the dark night, a glimpse of Heaven chanting their praises and announcing a Savior, I cannot begin to fathom what that would have been like. Shepherds cowering in fear and watching in awe, both amazed and speechless all at once. They went running into town as fast as they could go, to see this baby that Angels declared was Christ the Lord. God made flesh, God among us, is there anything that makes us more ready for Christmas than that? There were no wisemen in that cave, they were still hundreds of miles away, no Christmas gifts yet arriving for baby Jesus. Just a few strips of cloth to wrap him up, an exhausted Mother and a nervous Father, along with a few shepherds and maybe a few stunned townsfolk hanging around.
That was God's plan, from the moment Adam took his first bite of forbidden fruit thousands of years before in the garden, God's plan was already in place, He was already preparing us for Christmas. He was the gift, He was our gift, all wrapped up in cloth and straw, just waiting for us to take hold of Him and accept the greatest gift we could have ever received.
The plan for our Salvation had arrived, God was ready to redeem us, He was ready to be us! God was willing to leave a perfect Heaven and come to a broken Earth just so he could walk among us, He left his throne to lay in a manger, He left a non-stop chorus of praise in Heaven to come and be taunted, ridiculed, beaten and killed... sacrificed, just for us. He felt our hunger, He felt our pain, He felt our weakness, He felt our temptation, and He chose to come and live as us so that He could understand us, and so that we could see what perfection looked like, so He could be that final sacrifice we needed, once and for all. That baby laying in that trough crying in the night was our only way back to Heaven, back to perfection, back to God, our creator, who loves us so much that all he asks us to do in return is believe... trust Him, follow Him, praise Him, believe! That is the spirit of Christmas, that is the anticipation, that is what makes the magic... Are you ready?