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The First Real Christmas
What really happened the night our Saviour was born? Have you ever really thought about it? An unmarried teenage girl gave birth to her firstborn. What would people say about her? Mary was young but she was old enough to know that talk about an unmarried teenager giving birth would not go away. Mary, Joseph and Jesus would live with nasty gossip for a long time. Jesus’s birth was a scandal that compromised religious values and morality. Joseph couldn’t find a place to stay so they were forced to welcome their son into the world in a barn. There was no clean and warm place for them to go. If that wasn’t bad enough they had to contend with King Herod. There was no room for them in Bethlehem so they fled to Egypt and only returned when Herod died. There was no room in Judea so the family had to move to Egypt, one of the places most despised by Jews.
Joseph, Mary and Jesus became fugitives, running from the very people to whom Jesus came. There was no room for Jesus in god-fearing, church going, religious society. There was no room for Jesus in the inn, no room in Bethlehem and no room in all of Judea. Scandal
gossip, a family running for their lives with a newborn out of wedlock, forced to live as aliens in a foreign country. The stable Jesus was born in would have been dirty, smelly and un-sanitary at best but despite all of the hardships Mary and Joseph faced, Jesus was born so
everyone could leave the spiritually polluted barnyards or our lives and be given spotless, unpolluted and unsullied eternal rooms in god’s house. Jesus came to make room for us even though he knew he would be greeted with the “no vacancy” sign at every turn and corner of his physical earthly life. He came even though he knew he would receive a rude reception all of his life and culminating with a torturours death on a cross. He accepted the ridicule that the label of illegitimacy would bring. He accepted the fact that his name would become a
profane word. He came so we could have a way out,
so that we would be given a new birth, a new name, a new life and that we would have the hope of an eternal future in God’s kingdom of heaven. He came so we could be reborn. When you receive Christmas cards this year, stop and think back to what the card really means. It’s not the pretty tree or lights or the Norman Rockwell painting of a perfect Christmas. It is not about holly or mistletoe or parties. It is not about singing carols. It’s not about sleigh bells and not about parties. It isn’t about snowmen, reindeer or Santa Claus. It is about a story of a child that came to give us the best present anyone could, eternal life in heaven. From humble beginnings came someone so great that he gave his life to save all of mankind. Isn’t that what Christmas is all about and not the pretty cards you receive?
