It is the first day of Christmastide!

This is the day where we get to see reality and reality is more hopeful than I often feel.

If you have messed up as I have, then hope seems foolish. I am not a hero nor likely to play one in the movies. The best thing I have done is to marry well and be part of the lives of four wonderful (now adult) children. I am sorry for the wrong and look to the right. The message of Christmas this year? Take hope. The right will prevail.

Politicians like Caesar Augustus had power, but they did not come with hope, just taxes.

The best religious leaders were embattled and persecuted and the worst had the power, not much hope there.

The rich too often oppressed the poor and many of the poor were drawn to cults that argued rebellion and blood shed would usher in a messianic age of prosperity. Hope sides with neither.

Then a Baby was born and reality was revealed. The real throne had a virgin Jewish woman sitting before the Almighty saying “yes” to God. She did not look powerful, but she was the very mother of God. That was reality and that is utterly hopeful. She was great not due to her lady parts, her womb and the breasts that would nurse Jesus, but because she heard the Word of God and did it. 

She chose wisely and so exercised that divine gift: free will.

I love that image of Mary pictured so often in the East. She is not primarily known for her virginity, but for her role as Theotokos: the mother of God. She was virgin, because she had chosen the power of chastity, but this is less in the oldest images than her power. She is exalted as the first of those who choose well, who pick mercy over bloodshed, birth over death, creation over destruction. She said “no” to wealth, zealotry, and honor. She was free.

What did she get in return?

This day she held God in her arms. She could go on saying “yes” as she taught him to grow in the grace, knowledge, and in favor with her neighbors and God. She knew His father intimately.

Yet note this Queen, for all God’s sovereign image bearers are when they choose wisely, points us to God, her Son in the Flesh. He is tiny, weak, suckling, and lying in a manger. He is God.

That is reality: know hope.

My brother Daniel wrote:

The Lord is impressing on our family the word HOPE for this Christmas and New Year. In the midst of these surreal times, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope”!

“Your Nativity, O Christ our God, / Has shone to the world the Light of wisdom! / For by it, those who worshipped the stars, / Were taught by a Star to adore You, / The Sun of Righteousness, / And to know You, the Orient from on High. / O Lord, glory to You!”

 

Don’t stress. There are eleven more days to come. Christians do holidays the way hobbits do meal times. We get as much of them as we can and we enjoy them decently, if not always in order! 

Christ is Born! Glorify Him!