Waking Up to Wonder Again

December is whirlwind fast and doesn’t find any deceleration until the middle of January, when the world seems to take a collective breath.  

Advent…the waiting and expectant anticipation of the coming King, begs us to slow down, commands our hearts to slow so that we don’t miss the wonder of Christmas.

Seven years ago, I found myself completely lost in the hustle of Christmas and the clamor of the world. I was caught up in presents and parties and outfits and wanting what someone else had and forgot about Jesus. But God, in His kindness and chivalry, rescued my heart on an average Sunday morning by WAKING me up to WONDER.

I sat passively in church and thought “What’s the big deal about the Christmas story?” I LOVED Jesus but I didn’t really care to know more about His birth, His family tree, or His story. I just didn’t care that much…and THAT broke my heart.

The story of Christmas was such a familiar part of my life that it had lost its wonder and awe. I had become numb. It had lost its power in my life. Christmas was something I DID instead of something I LIVED. I accepted it as truth but never let the weight of it shape my perspective.

Brokenly longing for change that Christmas, we placed a Jesse Tree in our home, turned it upside down, and God showed Himself to us in new ways. As we sat late at night and dug our noses into The Word, He saturated us with brand new vision. And as we folded back the pages of The Greatest Gift and read that “The birth of the child into the darkness of the world made possible not just a new way of understanding life but a new way of living it.” our hearts were pierced and my life was changed.

That Christmas helped me see Jesus as the lover of my soul. It unveiled His constant pursuit of me that began when He curled up small in the womb of a teenager; intentioned to live, in order to die for ME. For YOU.

When we pause and ponder the innocence and perfection of Christ, we can’t help but stand in awe of the gift that He is.

We must stop visualizing Jesus as a baby lying still in a manger and start seeing him through both the lens of humanity and the lens of divinity. He was a baby; a helpless, crying, hungry baby. And…He was God; fully knowing, without limitation, God.

When we rob Jesus of either his humanity or is divinity, we become blind to the gift that He is and we therefore miss the wonder of Him.

He was a baby, grasping his mother’s finger. A toddler, learning to talk. A boy, learning to build with His hands…when He created the world with His words.

He was God, fully aware of how His days would unfold and the hill named Calvary where He would die on my cross. He was God, gazing tenderly upon people whom He came to save. Fully man + Fully God.

Acknowledging the humility and love required to die on a tree, increases our awe for the baby lying in the manger. Wrapped in swaddling clothes to one day be stripped naked to bear our sin, be crushed by our shame, and die our death.

We can’t separate the manger from the cross, without separating the salvation from the Savior, which alleviates our awe and wonder of the gift that He is.

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)

God…wrapped himself into flesh, being made small enough to fit into our arms in order to make His way into our hearts. That’s the love story of Christ. That’s the love story of Christmas.

The Wonder of Christmas is that WE are the mission of Christmas. He has been coming for YOU, for ME, since the beginning of time and never once did He change his mind.

So, let the love story of Christmas and His constant coming for you seep down deep into your heart and let your soul be capsized by the WONDER of it all.

© Dani Hardy (December 18, 2018)

References:

The Greatest Gift (Ann Voskamp)

“The birth of the child into the darkness of the world made possible not just a new way of understanding life but a new way of living it.” (Frederick Buechner)

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14) (Holy Bible)