Coburn Kids

I have updates I promise, but I found this beautiful message on a blog I frequently read, Musings of a Distractible Mind, and had to share:

Christmas is not about prosperity and comfort, it is about help to the hopeless.  The central doctrine to this season is the incarnation: God becoming man.  God didn’t become a man because he thought it would be nice to spend time with us; he did so because we were hopeless.  He didn’t come to live in comfort, but to be poor.  He didn’t come to help good people, but to rescue the outcast.  He didn’t come to hear cheers for saving people, he came to be rejected and so to identify with rejects.  He scorned the self-righteous, and embraced the shameful.

What about the Christmas story itself?  Mary got pregnant out of wedlock and Joseph chose to bear the social shame.  They were in a country that was occupied by a foreign empire, ruled by self-seeking despots and self-righteous religious leaders.  Jesus was born in a barn -  not the clean manger scene we are used to.  The birth was announced to shepherds – people who were scorned by the “good” people of society.  The local ruler was so worried the messiah would overthrow him, he sent death squads to murder all children under two in the town where Jesus was born.

Fact or fiction, the scene was not pretty, but instead was filled with pain, despair, and hopelessness.  This is hardly what we see on TV.  This is hardly what we hear in church.  That is the setting describing the first Christmas, not a mall or warm living room with a tree.  Christmas doesn’t hide from pain, it addresses it.

Whether you take it as truth or just as an inspiring story, we should pay far more attention to this meaning.  Yes, it is great to give gifts and be with family – I will be doing that as well.  But there is no escaping the pervasive pain and suffering in this world.  The Christmas message is not about sheltering ourselves from that suffering, but instead going out among the suffering and providing comfort.