The Miracle of Christmas

Merry (almost) Christmas everyone. My long hiatus is swiftly coming to an end as my seasonal employment winds up for the year. It has been fun and slightly profitable, but exhausting as well. I will be glad to be home every night with my little people.

It has been interesting listening to the customers in our store chat as they prepare for Christmas. I can easily pick out the church-goer form the non-church-goer. There just seems to be a different focus. It’s not obvious in the way that a blinking neon sign would be obvious, but is an undercurrent that flows through everything they do.

I had an interesting conversation with an Evangelical minister who wandered into the store for some Christmas lights. He kept trying to explain to me about the “Miracle of Christmas”. I think it puzzled him that I don’t consider it a Miracle, big “m”, at all.

The birth of Christ is and was a joyous occasion. I have spent many a Christmas Eve midnight Mass crying openly over the joy of new life in the world, and that God loved us enough to give us His Son. Happy as His birthday is, it is not Miraculous. It is the natural consequence of pregnancy. It has the same amount of miracle as any birth.

Please don’t think I take it lightly that Our Lord was born of a virgin in that stable in Bethlehem. I just think that we look to much at the birthday party and forget the forest for the trees. The REAL Miracle happened back in March when an angel appeared to a scared young girl and asked her to give her life and her body over to the will of Almighty God. She said yes, and Christ was created.

He was Our Lord and Savior even then. In that instant when he was just a bubble, not even attached to His mother’s womb, just floating freely and dividing away, at that moment, He was our Lord.

It is the moment of the Incarnation which holds the truth of the Christmas Miracle. The fact that Jesus Christ began just as we all did, as a single bubbly cell floating around in search of a place to land. In that one tiny cell was the Salvation of the whole world. One tiny microscopic bubble….fully human and fully God.

So, celebrate the birth of Christ tomorrow, because birthdays are important. They mark new beginnings for all of us. But come March the 25th, go to Church and take a moment to fall upon your knees before God and thank him for the Miracle of Christmas. He came to Earth, and started small and helpless just like us. Take a moment, too, to thank His Mother because she was brave enough to look an angel in the face and say yes too all that he offered her.