What Christmas Means to Me
What Christmas Means to Me
My earliest memories of December are filled with joy and anticipation. As a child, Christmas meant new clothes, matching African print ashobi, Jollof rice and pot roast, carols and the thrill of crackers, bangers, sparklers, and joy.
As an adult, my Christmas memories have changed, but light has always remained, lighting our homes, the act of giving, bringing joy, and celebrating together. After eleven months of the year, the twelfth month comes along, and there is this turning on of a light switch that escorts us out of the year and into a new one. Christian singer Toby Mac captures it well in his song Christmas This Year: “And everywhere I go I can feel it. Some say it moves like a spirit. It falls on us once a year.”
Yet, with all the lightheartedness, celebration, gifting, food, and family, I am reminded that it has always been Jesus. People debate whether Jesus was really born in December, or why we celebrate Christmas with a tree or claim Christmas is a pagan holiday. These debates go on, but for me, Christmas is all about Jesus.
To explain further, I must go all the way back to the beginning, to God’s original intent and plan for man and woman in the garden of Eden. Scripture says after He created them, He told them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” (Genesis 1:28 ESV), and in the cool of the day, they communed with Him (Genesis 3:8).
Illogical Directives
“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” (Psalm 119:105 ESV)
When God gives directives, His Word has the inherent power to fulfill the task. Scripture tells us that the word of the Lord is active and powerful (Hebrews 4:12). When God speaks a word and we obey, something supernatural happens.
Power in Obedience
In 2 Kings 4: 42- 44, during a famine, Elisha received a firstfruits gift of twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in his sack. He directed a servant to use the gift to feed 100 men. When the servant hesitated at the impossibility, Elisha repeats the request and states, “Give them to the men, that they may eat, for thus says the Lord, ‘They shall eat and have some left.’” When the servant obeyed and set it before the men, everyone ate, and there was still food left over, according to the Word of the Lord.
Power is inherent in the Word of the Lord. Obediently carrying out His directives demonstrates His power. God's directives, however, are often not logical, and the temptation to convince ourselves otherwise is strong.
More testimony from scripture. This time in 2 Kings 5: 1-14, about Naaman’s leprosy. Elisha gives him God’s directives for his situation: “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.” Naaman’s response, not unexpected given his status and journey, was anger. Logically, the rivers back home in Damascus were far better than the Jordan. Why would God ask him to do something so illogical? However, after much fuss, when he obeyed and dipped seven times, his skin was restored like that of a newborn's. His story did not end with just a healing; he was transformed and came to faith in the God of Israel.
