When We Aren’t Complete (12/7/2023)

If you ask my children who are grown now about their Christmas memories, I am sure that at the top will be beginning our celebration by telling the Nativity Story and then placing the Baby Jesus in all the nativity sets about the house. As I look around this morning, I spy the multiple sets, the incomplete sets. As beautiful as they are, they are missing the essential piece, the essential character. They are all missing Jesus. It isn’t just for the family tradition that the baby Jesus figures are missing. It is a spiritual journey for me to Christmas. During Advent, I not only prepare for Christ’s coming, I consider daily how incomplete my world would be without Christ.

While the Christ child figure is missing from each set, I know that Christ is with me. Christ is trustworthy. Christ promised us “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and will come to him and make our dwelling with him” (John 14:23). But the absent figurine reminds me of my commitment to Christ, of my love of Christ, but most especially of Christ’s love for me that has been at the core of my life, forming me through the power of the Spirit.

At the end of The Christmas Carol, Scrooge promises to live Christmas everyday of the year after he spends a night realizing the cost and consequence of not living Christmas. At the end of Advent, as I sit with my family and engage my grandchildren in the retelling of the Nativity Story, I realize again and more powerfully what life without Christ would be, and I promise silently to love Christ and live Christ every day.

As we pray, ponder, and prepare during these days of Advent, let us spend time considering what the Father’s gift of the Son has meant to the world. Let us reflect on what Christ in our lives to date has meant and how our lives would be different without Christ. Let us mull over our recognition of Christ daily in our moments, our movements, our memories. And may Christmas day bring a new and stronger commitment to Christ, to loving Christ, to living Christ.

Until tomorrow, let us all love well.