The Reason for the Season
As we bumble about around long department store lines, Christmas light shows, and Christmas Eve church services, we are sure to smack into the line, “Jesus: The Reason for the Season.” If we aren’t in our usual panicked rush to have everything perfect for the holidays, we might take a moment and breathe a sympathetic sigh, “Why, yes, Virginia, Jesus is the reason for the season.” And, of course, sometime before the end of Christmas Day we will have read or heard a romanticized version of the Nativity Story.
While this truism has an element of truth, like most of everything else we do with the Word, it’s half-baked. While we thank God for sending Jesus forth that He might deliver us, we actually are the reason for the season:
looking unto Jesus, the captain and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2, RV, marg.)
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life. (John 3:16)
So while we celebrate the incarnation at Christmas, in God’s mind it’s all about us.
And what about those “romanticized” Nativity stories? I have yet to see a creche anywhere that includes Revelation 12:4:
… and the dragon stood before the woman which was about to be delivered, that when she was delivered, he might devour the child.