So, I’m back… I’ve entered an extremely eventful stage of preparation for the next season of my life with work, and an upcoming wedding, therefore I have not been able to carve out a chunk of time to sit and write focusedly. Despite everything going on I’ve realized that if this is important to me I must make time for it and get back into a rhythm. It’s Christmas day and it has been one of if not, my favorite day of the year. At the moment I am in a quiet house because I am the first one to wake after a large family gathering that ended at 4:00 am this morning. This holiday has been one of the best ones I’ve had in a while. I’ve had the opportunity to share it with my fiancé, her family and along with my own family in sunny Florida! After months of gray skies, and cold bitter winds in Chicago I have finally seen the sand and sun again. I had forgotten what it looked like! It has been an awesome Christmas season with immediate and extended family, and let’s not forget – great food!
Being Christmas day I was moved to read the Christmas story, obviously fitting for this special day. Yesterday afternoon I was praying for a couple minutes, and I felt moved by the Spirit of God to do something I had never done before. As a matter of observation, in our culture we spend a lot of time and effort to culturally and traditionally celebrate this day. Hours upon hours of time and resources are spent into this day annually. In the U.S. alone an article on CNBC.com projected over 1 trillion dollars in Christmas sales. I was convicted about all the time I spent in stores or online shopping for the right gifts, travelling to see family, but how much time and attention had I given to the One who’s birthday we are celebrating? It’s like one of those scenarios… have you ever been to a birthday party where you did not exactly know the birthday person well? One of those times were you attended a birthday party with your significant other or a friend, but you’re going to accompany them not because you know the person. Maybe it’s a little bit awkward of course because you’re not too acquainted with the people around you. This scenario happens a lot in my Hispanic culture, and if you’re Hispanic you know exactly what I’m talking about! Every year at midnight of Christmas day, my family gathers around my grandmother’s house in a massive circle and we open gifts one by one. Well “opening gifts” doesn’t describe exactly what goes on in my culturally diverse, and wild family, but it’s the basic idea. I felt moved to read the Christmas story together before we began our family tradition, so that we could give the “birthday boy” His rightful place of His celebration.
In light of being present with all of my extended family from different states and countries, I was reading about Jesus’ family in Matthew chapter one this morning. Like every family, mine is not perfect, but I would not change my family for anyone in the world. After reading about Jesus family, we could say that they were very, very far from being perfect. Christ’s genealogy was very diverse, sometimes not in a good way. When we think about the Messiah, this family isn’t one that we would humanly think the Messiah would come out of. In Joshua chapter number 2, we have the story of a woman who by reputation is a prostitute, Rahab. What’s crazy is that she was King David’s great, great grandmother. After her conversion to the belief in the God of Israel, her son married a girl from the land of Moab, where they worshipped a horrid idol named Chemosh, and some scholars think that Ruth was a moabitess princess. This Moabite, not belonging in Israel, ended up marrying into this family and gave birth to Obed, King David’s grandfather. So Israel’s arguably greatest king, the man who wrote a great chunk of the Old Testament, came from a lineage of a prostitute and a stranger who used to worship a false idol and did not belong in Israel. But, it did not matter where Rahab or Ruth were from, or what they had done in their past. No matter how messed up their situation and mistakes were – that did not matter, because they put their faith in the One true God. Later in Jesus’ genealogy we find David, a murder, and adulterer; Solomon, a wise man who foolishly pursued women over God; Rehoboam, who foolishly tore a kingdom apart that was united for nearly eighty years, all because he chose to listen to the wrong advice. There are many more examples of human flaws, mistakes, and weaknesses in Jesus’ family. But none of that mattered because at the end of the day, the story is not about those people.
Have you ever watched a movie that had a really bad storyline? The whole time you’re watching it doesn’t make sense, and you’re confused, but then the last 5 minutes of the movie brings everything together. Then in that last scene your mind gets blown away and all of a sudden it’s one of the greatest movies of all time! Such is the case with Jesus’ birth. This baby born in Bethlehem brought all of these bad storylines together to compose the greatest story of all time. The Son of God made Himself weak, and vulnerable so that He could take all those mistakes, flaws, and failures, and bring us back to a relationship with His Father. God was able to give purpose to this lineage of weak and sinful people by taking all of their err, making it His own, and paying the ultimate price for all of these by His own death.
My goal is to convey this truth to you. It does not matter who you are or what you have done, your story can have a purposeful and joyful ending too. All you need to do is let God take the pen from your own hands. As I once was, are you not tired of messing up your life’s storyline? I have a very blessed life, but it has nothing to do with who I am. l what I am because God worked in me, in spite of who I am. And He can do the same for you if you’ll hand Him the pen, this is called grace.
Happy Birthday Jesus, and a Happy 2019 to you my reader.
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