In some ways I’m not a very observant fellow. I’m the guy who can walk a street I’ve been down hundreds of times over twenty years and say, “Hey has that house always been there?” or “Have you ever noticed that tree before?” to which my family will respond, “Yes, Olivier, that’s been there for years.” I just don’t pay attention. I get lost in conversation or my thoughts and before I know it, I’ve walked across half the town and haven’t observed much of anything. I’ve missed the reality of the house with a cool porch or the beauty of that big tree in the front yard.
Entering this Christmas season, I had the mind to set out and walk the streets of Bethlehem and recognize the importance of Jesus' birth. I wanted to take care to intentionally pay attention to what this season is truly about and the implications it carries for our lives, for my life. However, as I walk, I get lost in conversation and in my own thoughts. Conversations about Christmas dinners and family plans and church functions. Often, they’re in reference to the stress they carry and the desire to have some rest and quiet. My thoughts circle on how to keep a struggling café up and running, how to resolve relational tensions, and how to balance all the responsibilities I’m trying to hold in my very limited hands.
I walk and I talk and I think. Then out of the corner of my eye I see a building. And I ask, “Has this barn been here all along?” I’ve been so busy trying to do life and to do Christmas that I’ve walked right past it a hundred times.
Am I missing it? Has Christmas turned into a season of walking unobservant to my surroundings? Has it turned into a season of stressful striving and selfish ambition?
The world we live in today looks a lot different than it did back in Bethlehem when Jesus was born. But when I dig underneath the surface, I see the same blindness in myself (ironic statement I know) that the Israelites’ eyes were darkened with. They were watching and waiting for the Messiah. But they had their own ideas of what He should look like. The Israelites knew the Scriptures and God’s promises just as well as I know the streets of my hometown. They walked in them, lived and breathed their air. But when the time came, they missed it.
This year I’ve been writing the advent readings for my local church’s Sunday services through December. They’re nothing long or in depth. Even so, with the short amount of time I’ve spent studying for and writing them out, I can’t help feeling that I overlook something so fundamentally important to the Christian walk. Not just every once and a while, but on the daily basis. I write about peace, hope, joy, and love. But I see such a stark absence of those things in my life. Now, in part, my writings have turned into a defiance to the stress of the season and my own distraction from its beauty, goodness, and truth. They echo the better part of me that longs to live daily in step with the Holy Spirit, living out those advent truths.
I don’t want to miss it anymore. Like Mary, I want to pay attention, and treasure the things I see in my heart. I long to be truly changed by Jesus so that my life is filled with peace, hope, joy, and love. This is my prayer this Christmas season, for myself and for you, reader. That even if the circumstances around you are chaotic, even if the future looks bleak, even if stress threatens to overwhelm, even if you’re feeling lonely, you will still find yourself at the foot of the manger. May you worship at the feet of Jesus so that your life will brim over and spill out in contagious beauty into lives of those around you.
Our God is with us. Our God is for us. Merry Christmas!
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