If we simply look at what goes on in the world at this time of year, we gain a very skewed perspective of what Christmas is all about: glitter, lights, spending vast amounts of money, overeating, noise and toys. Christians celebrate Christmas, however, because this is the time when God broke into the world, appearing in human form.
Is 9:6-7 reminds us of the fact that hundreds of years before Christ’s birth, God told Isaiah of His great plan of salvation, that the Wonderful Counsellor would come through a virgin, not to inaugurate a political reign (to the dismay of the Jews under Roman oppression), but to bring about God’s kingdom on earth. We live ‘between the times’ of Christ’s first coming as a baby at Bethlehem and His second coming as glorious Lord of the Universe, and both perspectives need to be held by us as we contemplate the positive plans God has for us. (Jer 29:11)
God has a plan for good for our lives, even when circumstances are far from good and all around us looks miserable or hostile. Sacred truth is always lived out in the secular realm. We are called to live our lives in the real world, not just when we are in church, but in our ordinary, everyday lives. History may tell us that it was the Roman census which determined Jesus’s birthplace, but Micah 5:2 reminds us that history is His story, for God predicted Christ’s birthplace long before Roman rule! God orchestrates everything we call life so that all that seems random to us is actually part of His plan! (life is ‘intentionally haphazard’, as Eugene Peterson says.)
Luke 2 reminds us that Christ’s birth came at an inconvenient time in an inconvenient place, but Gal 4:4 reminds us that this was God’s perfect timing and part of His perfect plan. Our lives were presented with a future and a hope because of Christ’s birth, and the fact that God chose shepherds – whose everyday exposure to dead animals as part of their job rendered them unclean according to Jewish laws and who were regarded as the lowest of the low in some respects – to be the first evangelists reminds us that God’s ways are not our ways and of the need to revise our opinions of social classes. The good news needs to be told to all groups and classes and the shepherds demonstrate to us the blessings that come from simple obedience! (see John 13:17) We too are blessed when we obey God and tell others of all He has done for us.