Here with us.

Well, try as I might, I am not in the Christmas spirit.
Though my house be bedecked with all manner of holidazzle, though the Day is very nearly on my doorstep, though I ate 4 decorated sugar cookies TODAY alone, and though I am listening to more Sarah McLaughin Christmas and Joy William’s ‘Here with us,’ I still have no gifts made or purchased (and might just skip it this year, for the record), I am hosting no parties at my house, and I feel no typical emotional bubblings of mirth and merriment.

Call me Scrooge.

Or Grinch.
Whatever.

My mind is elsewhere, I suppose.

And while I don’t want to put a damper on YOUR Christmas spirit, if you have it, when I try to think about Christmas, this year all I can think about is Jerusalem.

And how it looks nothing like Christmas.

And how it doesn’t snow there except maybe in the mountains.
And how Christmas trees don’t grow there.

Blah. The downside of seeing with your very own eyes? Ruined mental pictures.

And since this year my mind will not accept images of snow in the manger, I try to picture Mary and Joseph and the Savior baby that came, all bundled into a barn that looks nothing like Christmas…and I find myself selfishly praying that I never experience a Christmas like that first Christmas Mary went through.

I mean, yeah, there were angels…which would be cool…and there were shepherds that came out of nowhere…which would be kind of intrusive maybe in her state?...and there was a Baby you loved  with everything….a Baby who would love her more than she would ever love him.

But…in spite of all of that, and though God had said this was He who was going to save the people from their sins, was this her Christmas wish come true?

Why do I feel like it was not?

Why do I feel like, in spite of it being the very birth of incarnate God, it wasn’t quite what she would have wanted for Christmas?

Funny enough, if I try to image myself in her shoes, I think I would be praying.

Praying for God to be there. I mean, what else would there be to do in the face of a future so uncertain and a reality already riddled so heavily with scorn and suspicion?

Though He had called her blessed, though the angel had said don’t be afraid, though she was being a prophecy fulfilled, all I think I would have wanted at that point would to be to know that God was with me; that he still saw me, that he was going to be “at my right hand” through all the skepticism from others I would bear my whole life for being “that girl” that got pregnant before she got married in a culture that stoned women who did that.

I would need him to walk with me through the reputation that came with bearing the Lord. I would need him with me. Today, in the barn, and every day after.

Because, though she knew her baby was the Lord, not all accepted that. And being his mom was going to be a lonely road.

Hmmm….

And maybe that’s Christmas; maybe the pattern for the season was set some 2,000 years ago in a smelly barn:

The admitting that we need Someone.

Someone to walk us through this life sometimes so wrought with scorn and skepticism and people whispering behind your back. Or a life that sometimes can feel like all your plans have changed and nothing has gone according to plan. Or even a life where all is beautiful all the time.
The admitting that, just like the new mom who was probably praying to not be alone, what we need more than anything…is God with us.

I guess then, since it goes without saying that her life had not gone QUITE like she most likely wanted it to, I guess that she did get her Christmas wish: she had God with her.

Her answered prayer.

Can you imagine? Being the deliverer of all the answers to your prayers? Of all the world’s prayers? Delivering what you needed most? So desperately?

 

Wow.

It says a couple times in “the Christmas story” that Mary treasured things in her heart.

Maybe that was one of the things she treasured; the realization that her God answered her prayer. He was there.
Closer than she had probably never dared to pray he be.

 

Right there.

 

In that barn.

Wrapped in those swaddling cloths.

Laying in a food trough.

Right before her very eyes.

All she would ever need and the answer to all prayer: God with her.