Let every heart prepare Him room…
The culmination of Advent is here. It’s Christmas morn. Christ is Come. We’ve spent our December preparing for His coming. Well… preparing, yes; preparing our hearts room for Christ, maybe not.
If we are honest, we more likely prepared everything but our hearts. Prepared by shopping, gift-wrapping, cooking, cleaning, traveling and what-not. And, now it’s here and we are gathered with the loved ones we prepared for and we do really want it to be about Christ. But with all the gathering, gifting and gorging it’s easy to lose focus on the One we are celebrating.
Fear Not: for behold, I bring you Good News of Great Joy…
But instead of loading yourself with guilt, feeling like once again you’ve been too busy and failed to prioritize the “Reason for the Season,” let’s go back to the manger for a moment. In the lowly, smelly stable He meets us, because no other better place had been prepared. His arrival into the messy and imperfect though completely by God’s design.
He came for those who had waited and hoped for His arrival, but He also came for those who were not prepared. The fullness of God enfleshed in the Christ-child who had come to fill all who believed with His glory and grace. But His glory and grace means nothing if we don’t see who He is for us and why He is the gift needed by all humanity.
Come and behold Him.
Fully man, the spotless lamb of God, became the necessary sacrifice to atone for sin’s stain on our hearts. He bore the price and paid it all with His life for His people. But He also came to live the perfect sin-free life none of us could ever attain.
So when we see it was our sin that sent Him to the cross and that we need the salvation He offers, we are met with the righteousness of his perfect life cast upon us as our holy covering. And God sees us accordingly – holy and perfect.
All we need to do is come as a child on Christmas morning prepared to receive. We get hung up here though. We feel like a gift must be paid back with a gift – the idea of reciprocity or that we must do something to at least earn the gift. But the only thing we can do is acknowledge our need for the gift of God. And when we see the glorious grace He so generously bestows, our unprepared hearts will fill with the joy and peace He brings.
Joy to the world! The Lord has come
Let Earth Receive Her King!
For past Christmas Day posts: Smells of Christmas, Behold the Lamb and Light to the World
