I have written an essay, in an effort to keep up with the spirit of Christmas. I suppose this is a little late in the season to be posting, but then again, when better to be reminded about the truth of Christmas than in the final week of Advent? I Hope that from this lumbering, stumbling conglomeration of words you, the reader, will find some spark of truth. Here goes...
...Throughout my life, as I look back on the holiday of Christmas, I have a warm feeling in my heart, from so many wonderful memories of traditions that my family took part in. Christmas has for some reason always been the most important of all holidays to me. I haven't always been able to explain it, but it is almost as if Christmas were the holiday that all the others pointed to. Whenever Christmas came, I felt a tingling in my soul, as if by some divine act, my soul had been lit on fire. When I was young, I couldn't explain it, but I relished it with all my heart. I loved it dearly and wished for it at all times.
As I have grown older, that feeling that so fulfilled me before has begun to fade. It is like when a light bulb begins to go out, and the coil inside grows so dim that you can look at it without burning your eyes. It hasn't been an extremely conscious thing, but rather a subtle act that snuck up and caught me by surprise. At least now I know what it was. I understand that the joy I felt came from Christ, and even in my little child way, I knew it was more important than anything else. I know now that Christ is still central to Christmas, but it has been a long while since I understood why. The answer that I have found seems to lie in one place: Immanuel.
Immanuel means in ancient hebrew, 'God with us'. It has been applied to Christ for almost all of history since. But there is another aspect within God with us, that we have all but lost in recent years. God wasn't just with all the people from ages past, who knew that divine spark, but He is now with us, through the mystery of the incarnation. Because Christ became incarnate and present among His people, they knew Him in a new and accessible way. God was present with them, and He walked with them, on the earth as one of them. Christ of course is no longer physically present as a man. But through His sacrifice, and through His incarnation, He is present with us in spirit, and through His spirit, is transforming us. We are in a constant state of transformation, just as the incarnate Christ is in a constant state of renewing us. We can't leave the idea of Christ behind, as if it were a good memory, we must take it up and bring it to life, again and again and again.
Only then can we truly understand the incredible beauty of immanuel, that God is no longer separate from man, but through a love greater than our flimsy, small-minded ideals could conjure, He has become incarnate, here with us. We should never fool ourselves into thinking that it was one time event in history that we look back on with sentimentality. No, we need immanuel more now than we ever have. Perhaps we have been able to veil our need with better skill, but underneath the stubborn facade, our hearts still cry out for immanuel. We still rely solely on the mystery of the incarnation, that Christ wasn't once, but rather He is always, and continues to incarnate Himself in the hearts of His people to transform them into all that they can be. We will never be able to fully understand the mystery of the incarnation, but we are able to see clearly the love that is and always will be within us. For Christ was not only a man who lived for 30 years and paid the ultimate sacrifice. He is the incarnation, the coming, and He will come again someday. That day will be the final and most glorious incarnation, when we finally will be present with Him, and He with us, and all of the anguish and sorrow and struggles that we have endured will be completed by the everlasting presence of His love.
Throughout this Christmas season, we should bring to light that in the same way that we remember and look back to that glorious night two thousand years ago by celebrating it through Christmas, Christ is also here in the present, continuing to bring light to the darkness, and hope to the hopeless.
That joy, which I almost lost, I have found again, and now understand in a full way what it means when I feel that surge of energy within me, that I knew so well as a child. I hope and pray that you may find it too, and learn to live within the beauty of the incarnate Christ, now at Christmas, and throughout the year.
I wish you all a happy Christmas, and a happy new year!
