night divine

This time of the year, we are surrounded by the BIGNESS of the Holiday season: Christmas carols, lights, cookies and candy, crowded shopping malls, stockings, cards in the mail, red cups at Starbucks, wrapping paper, spending-more-than-I-wanted guilt, family dinners, and your fill of the colors green, red, and white. And yet amidst the hustle and bustle, there is something about Christmas that gets inside of everyone. Maybe it is the sales, maybe it is the excitement of receiving a gift you have been waiting for, maybe it is even the days off of work and school; but for everyone, something about this time of year stirs up the child-like anticipation in each of us.

But what I am still learning and trying to grasp is that the BIGNESS of the Holiday season is much more than I can fit in a gift box or put on my credit card. The bigness is an event that changed the course of history. The bigness made an unborn baby leap inside his mother’s womb; it caused kings and empires to shudder in fear; it fulfilled hundreds of prophecies to the letter and caused wise men to throw off all their other plans until they found it—until they found him (read Matthew 1-2 for the whole story).

The BIGNESS was a baby, and his name was Jesus. The hope of the world, the One humankind had been waiting for, born as a vulnerable baby in the humblest of circumstances, stirring hope in some and rebellion in others, but stirring something in all who heard about him. This was a big, big night, the night the Savior of the world arrived.

I spend far too much time budgeting my money for gifts and decorating trees than I do letting the HOPE of this night fill my heart. God’s plan for the redemption of the world through his son, Jesus, began on this glorious night in Bethlehem. Why are we all not leaping for joy at that truth alone?

I love presents and decorations, but I want everything I do as part of the Holiday season to be an extension of the joy of this baby that I cannot keep inside. I want to give gifts because I have already been given the only gift I will ever need. I want to really listen to the words of some of the songs relegated to the category of Christmas carol but dripping with true theology. I want to feel goose-bumps on my arms every time I see a manger scene because I know it represents something so much cooler than decorations. I want to smile at the woman behind the store counter who says “Happy Holidays” and say back “Yes, it is a HAPPY holiday!”

My favorite song this time of year is “O Holy Night.” Hundreds of big-name singers put out their own rendition of this classic and never even realize the power of the message they are singing:

Oh holy night, the stars are brightly shining
It is the night of our dear SAVIOR’S birth…
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
‘Til HE appeard, and the soul felt it’s worth…

Fall on your knees, oh hear the angel voices
Oh night divine, oh night, when Christ was born…

Oh night divine!

The world was lost in sin and pain and confusion and struggle and question, until baby Jesus came, and brought worth and meaning back to everyone. May that make each one of us fall on our knees in gratitude and humility. May it make us all sing in celebration with the angels. May it make us party with new purpose this Christmas.

This baby on this night changed everything.

It was indeed a divine night.