It is nearly Christmas Eve. 1 hour and 57 minutes left. The house is quiet except for the sound of Hope’s heavy breathing of slumber—and the washing machine working on a load of towels and sheets. Kai sleeps soundlessly, only his shoulders rising and falling. Shalom is sprawled across my arm here, her long eyelashes delicate and still in dreams.
My eyes move from one child to the other, watching, waiting. I glance up at the clock. 36 minutes since the last child called for the bucket, stomach heaving.
I have made all the necessary phone calls to cancel our attendance for Christmas Day dinner and the ham and the turkey. Mama, phone tucked under her chin, elbow deep in stuffing, graciously—sadly— understood. Let my sister know we would not be sipping hot chocolate in the candlelight with her on Christmas Eve as she reads from the Gospel of Luke to all the clamoring cousins.
So I sit here in the dark before the fire, waiting to dash at the first sign of wretching. And the tree, bedecked in its Jesse Tree Ornaments, stands watch with me, its lights dancing with flickering fire flames.
Looking at the line up of glasses of Gatorade, I smile. Christmas is not ruined, regardless of the fact we won’t be having Granny’s chutney. Such a ridiculous thought. Every symbol of His grand story hanging on the tree proclaims the truth. Christ did not come to candle-flickering affairs, with towers of wrapped and ribboned boxes precariously perched under evergreen trees swaddled swaths of velvet and gold finery. Christ came to a smelly feed trough in a dark cattle pen because this world was ridden with disease, wretchedly sick, and wracked with inescapable illness—soul, body and mind. And in dire, wild desperation of relief and healing.
Our flu-derailed Christmas is right on track. This is exactly why Christ came. His point of destination was to sick people like us who writhed for a healing touch, who burned for living waters, who moaned for new bodies.
I want Christmases of beauty, and wonder, and Norman Rockwell scenes. And I forget that the first Christmas was a messy, dirty, grimy affair. But that is just like God—go to the place of the greatest need, roll up His sleeves up and begin tending to very messy, very real, very needy aching people.
It is the perfect Christmas. For You come, Lord Jesus, You come.
Lord, Your concept of Christmas is not a sterile, antiseptic, disinfected occasion—but mine is. What a relief Christmas isn’t my vision but Yours— about You coming to nurse, and care for— and cure—-sick people…like us.
