Today is Christmas 2022. I sit here and reflect on the past several days and, as I always do, I have regrets. I grieve the things that are and the things that are not.
I envision a picture perfect door decoration and entry. Without the help from a good friend, I wouldn’t even have had a wreath on the doors. My front porch has leaves and plastic bowls for pets, hunting clothes strewn over the rails, a pile of muddy shoes at the entrance.
Christmas morning breakfast should have had a table set with my favorite Christmas dishes, shiny sterling silver , a sideboard filled with sausage, grits casserole, ambrosia, cranberry scones. Neatly dressed children lined up, serving themselves after the adults are seated. Soft seasonal music in the background and a warm fire adding ambiance to the room.
It was more like a cyclone at the breakfast table. Paper plates strewn around. Baby’s chair with dried scrambled eggs. Mismatched cups and styrofoam leftovers from the previous meal. Nobody sitting down at the same time; prayers of thanks given as people shifted around .
The scene in the living room Christmas Eve was not picture-perfect. The grandchildren insisted on showing off their ugly teeth and silly faces as they clustered around their grandfather in his wheelchair—the same man who should have been bringing in the firewood and leading the Christmas devotional.
From the juxtapositional vignettes, my thoughts went to the original Christmas, the entry of the Babe of all babes, the Gift of all gifts: Jesus the Christ. The world He created was designed in perfection beyond all comprehension. It was supposed to be a magnificent garden where the inhabitants had not only every good and perfect sensory gift , but an eternal unbroken connection with the Master and Ultimate Father of the universe. The lion was to lie down with the lamb; the entire himan race was to be united in adoration of the God of all gods and experience only love and kindness for one another. There was supposed to be total peace and harmony. Instead, He came to a world of chaos and rebellion, hatred and separation. What colossal disappointment Jesus must experience when He found the mess mankind created here.
Is there any wonder why we grieve at Christmas? Could some of our feelings come from having the nature of Christ in us, the nature that yearns for peace, harmony, and love but gets the opposite?
