Today, not everything is going my way.
It's Christmas Eve, and I've already had the usual barrage of very NON-holiday-ish child-rearing episodes. I've already had one or two exchanges with people that were....well.....let's just say less than Baby-Jesus-in-the-Manger-Picture-Perfect. And, to top it all off, I've had to spend well over an hour on one task that I really didn't plan for today. It was upsetting. It was a real downer. Not what I wanted to be doing.
And I was starting to get mad. How could I focus on Christ, in the midst of all this??
But you know what? The real question is: How can I not?
Baby Jesus (and the grown up Jesus) doesn't look at it like I do. He knows that it's not going to be perfect. He knows that as I celebrate His amazing arrival, things aren't going to be all set up just right for me to "feel reverent," and "get holy" all of a sudden. His very coming down was to us here in the muck and mire of our tangled up sin. Ugly sin. Killjoy sin.
And today, I'm going to make sure that I don't forget that God knows where I'm at. Celebrating His birth doesn't have to be picture perfect, and I'm not going to let all the "stuff of earth" cloud my ability to marvel in it--and that includes my own selfish desire to just get my own way. Even if "all I want for Christmas" is to be able to "focus on Christ," even that can get in the way. Because although the desire to have a Christ-focused Christmas is a very good thing, turning that desire into an idol, and making it in my own image (It has to look like this!") is a very bad thing.
And letting Jesus come on his own terms is really what I want, after all. I just tend to forget.
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