Extra: “What’s that have to do with Jesus?”

The holiday season was drawing near and several of the workers in town where starting to prepare for the season.  One of my YOU friends had witnessed all the excitement and finally asked me “ you guys are doing a lot to get ready, tell me more about Christmas in Canada?”.  At the time it was five years since I had spent the season at home with my family, and I was filled with nostalgia.  His question was like bursting a dame, despite limited language skills I rambled on for over twenty minutes, talking about trees, and carolers, the decorations at the mall, flavored coffee that tasted like “Christmas in a cup”.  I told him about the wreaths and the bells, the sights and smells.  I waved my arms around in eager description of all the little details about Christmas I missed from home.  By the time I was down my eyes glowed with the warmth of a hundred twinkle lights on a tree.

 He sat silently the whole time I gushed, and when I finally took a breath and gave him the opportunity to comment, all he said was “What does any of that have to do with the birth of Jesus?”

I felt rather deflated, “Well, as you know Christmas is his birthday and these are the things we do to celebrate.”  I tried to defend my long list of traditions. 

“As a YOU believer, do I have to do those things too to celebrate?”

Instead of trying to further justify when the season is better with holly and ivy sprucing up the hand rail, I grab my YOU bible and we turned to the beginning of Luke and read the account of the Christmas story together.  As we discussed the story after my friend commented on how struck he was by how often Mary’s character was mentioned, he looked back to the word “she was called ‘highly favored’ it said ‘the LORD was with her’, later it says ‘you have found favor with God’ and also “ Blessed is she who has believed what the LORD said to her will be accomplished’” he paused for a second to collect his thoughts, “ can you imagine an angle telling you ‘ you have found favor with God’, I think we can prepare for Christmas by making sure our attitude is right before him.  That when he looks at me he is pleased and that he might favor to use me too in his plans.”

In that simple statement of trust and desire to be transformed into Christ’s likeness in attitude and action he had stripped away all my descriptions of a huge Christmas meal, and struck my heart with how we all should really feel.

May our main priority this Christmas season not be finding the prefect decoration for our tree, but having a heart set apart for only Thee – Amen.