Merry Christmas. It is simply the greeting of our culture for some,
For others it is a sincere wish and prayer.
With those two words we seem to say:
Have a great day. Allow yourself the pleasure of a feast day, in which the rules are suspended a bit; in which there is room for merriment and relationship. Enjoy yourself. And indeed that merriment and those relationships have been part of how Christmas has been celebrated for centuries.

Yet, we have no guarantee that Christmas will indeed be merry:
For this season is full of paradox: It is a religiously based holiday in which retail sales are the highest of the year. Through media, and other sources of information, there seems to be this expectation that Christmas should be a time of great cheer; yet many who celebrate the holiday have no idea why we are to be so merry - and indeed Christmas can be a bitter time for many who suffer in silence as the world toasts its joy.

Yet a greater paradox lives within the Christmas frame: that within the very trappings of Christmas as we find them, lies the heart of the message of Christ's coming.

For Christ did not come into a world that laid out the red carpet for his arrival. No one put up decorations in his honor. There were no parties celebrating his arrival; no crèche exhibits.
Christ came into a world that was predominantly secular - a child of a troublesome religious sect in the midst of the Roman Empire. There was no room for him in the inn, and there was no interest in him in most parts of the kingdom.
Yet, in his coming we find great treasure on which to base our faith: For his coming was as paradoxical as our present holiday:

• That a virgin would become the mother of God
• That a manger in a stinky stable contained the very God that created the earth upon which it stood.
• That angels - the highest of heaven - would rejoice together with shepherds - the lowest of earth.
• That God thought enough of his creation to send his only Son to repair what was broken.

Perhaps finding the candle flame of hope at Christmas time requires us to understand the paradox of Christmas -
- that underneath the wrappings, behind the gifts, hidden in the commercialism and dysfunctional families -
- - Christ awaits us.
Not away from those things, but in the midst of them, waiting for us to notice that he is there - waiting for us to see;
waiting for us to leave our flocks, or our labors, or our merriment, and come and worship, but then to return to those labors, knowing that Emmanuel has come to be with us wherever we are.

Sometimes I find that the wisdom of Christmas is found more clearly in texts written long ago. One of our Christmas hymns points to Christ as being, far beyond a babe in a manger, the ONE who chose to come amongst us; the one who chose to be the candle of hope hidden in the trappings of this world:

For he is our lifelong pattern; daily, when on earth he grew,
he was tempted, scorned, rejected,
tears and smiles like us he knew.
Thus he feels for all our sadness,
and he shares in all our gladness.

The wonder of Christmas is contained in the fact that Christ, Emmanuel, came to dwell amongst us. In the midst of our lives, not separate from them. In the midst of our merriment, or our sadness, he awaits.

My prayer is that you will indeed have a merry Christmas. That in any of the challenges you may face, you will find Jesus in your midst. That in seeking Christ in one another, in fellowship around the table, in gifts given and received, you will find God come in flesh.