The Wonder of Christmas

As with every Christmas season, the word “wonder” is used a lot. Kathie Lee Gifford sings, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” and countless cards use the word to describe everything from sleigh bells to scenes of little churches set in the middle of snowy villages. All these “wonders” can cause us to overlook the real wonder of Christmas. Think about this – we Christians actually claim (and hopefully believe) that the God of all creation (infinite space, innumerable galaxies, protons, electrons, quarks, and on and on beyond all comprehension) became an individual human and lived as one of us. The ultimate Being took the form of a dependent infant! When we really think about this, that is truly a wonder.
I believe this incredible reality is what the Apostle John was emphasizing when he wrote in 1 John 1:1, “...what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of life....” Only the Christian faith dares to make such an astounding claim, yet we who name ourselves as believers in this faith sometimes take it for granted, and we exchange the amazing mystery of Christmas for a ho-hum attitude or a saccharine sweet idea of a quiet, clean baby in a sanitized manger filled with fragrant well-behaved animals. No, the pure holy God of all becomes totally involved in the messiness of living a real human life – completely and totally!
This truth should overwhelm our hearts and minds as we consider God’s amazing love for us, that the God who is totally beyond anything we can possibly imagine becomes a person who we can relate to, who gives himself for us in his death on a cross, and who is risen from the grave. As we turn the page to a new year in 2020, this is what we celebrate, this is what gives us strength, and this is what gives us hope. Indeed, this is the wonder of Christmas!