Meditations of Christmas

Luke 2:19

“But Mary was treasuring up all these things in her heart and meditating on them.”

With all the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season it almost feels impossible for us to truly concentrate on the real meaning of Christmas. We are busy with Christmas parties with our friends and family, maybe traveling to go and visit family. We might even have a Christmas play or two that tries to point us in the right direction for Christmas, but with all of these things do we truly realize the magnitude of the meaning of Christmas? Do we have time to sit back and think about all that this time of year means to us?

This past Sunday we had our annual Christmas Cantata and all throughout it my mind keep racing back to the verse above, and I kept asking myself questions like, what was she meditating on? Why did Jesus have to be born the way that He did? What is the meaning behind all of this?

Looking back at Luke chapter 2 we can find the answer to most of these questions. Mary was meditating, not just on the nights events of the birth of her son, but probably the whole 9 months leading up to it. She was a teenage girl, a virgin, who was visited by an angel and told she was going to have a baby that was conceived by the Holy Spirit. She then had to endure the ridicule that came along with claiming to be a virgin, yet being pregnant at the same time. Then comes the night of baby Jesus’ birth. They are strangely visited by kings who bring them gifts because of the child’s birth. Shepherds come from the fields around to see the baby. I believe that Mary was treasuring up the fact that the baby that she held had meaning in this world. Meaning that she didn’t even comprehend at that time, but a tremendous amount of meaning and importance. I can’t imagine what she went through for 9 months leading up to Jesus’ birth, but I am sure that the events of the night of His birth made all of it worthwhile.

But why did Jesus have to be born the way that he did? I believe that Christ had to be born like this because He had to be born of a human to redeem us from our sins. God humbled himself to be born in a barn, where animals slept and ate, for us. The answer I kept coming to for the reason behind the way Jesus was born was because He loves us. God loved us that much that, even though he was the king of kings and creator of the universe, he chose to be born in a barn.

What is the meaning behind all of this? By that question I mean what does all this boil down to? Well we find the answer to that question not in Luke chapter 2, but in the sacrificial death of Jesus for our sins. See, the birth of Jesus is only the beginning of the story. It should be celebrated because it is monumental, but the real celebration comes in the fact that “But God proves His own love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)