Christmas is God Birthing

Christmas is celebrating the conceiving and birthing of Jesus, the Christ. 

Mary was His mother, the human channel.  The Holy Spirit was His Father, the divine channel.

Consequently, Jesus is the God-man, the only personage of His kind in all history.

Christmas' new life is the zenith of God's delight in birthing  miraculously, such being both prelude and postlude to the virgin conception of Jesus Christ.

For instance, at the creation of the first human, Adam, God birthed this man from the earth. Granted, it was a secondary creation to underline the human's need for humility; nevertheless, it was a miraculous birthing--from dust to man. Only God could have done it.

From the womb of divine grace was born the original human being, the height of creation's journey.

Further in history, Abraham and Sarah were promised a son, the child of promise. God gospeled them this; therefore, it was mandated to come to pass.

However, as the couple grew older, they passed childbearing ages. Nevertheless, while Abraham was l00 and Sarah was 90, they experienced a miracle conception in an elderly woman's womb. Birthing God miraculously sparked Isaac's life in a womb supposedly not able to carry a child. There is no other explanation possible than that: it was sheer miracle.

Adam and Abraham foreshadow Zechariah. This Jewish priest was informed by God's angel, Gabriel, that his elderly wife, Elizabeth, would become pregnant. For this to occur, a miracle would have to take place in her aged body. It did take place. Birthing God once again saw to it.

From Elizabeth's womb came John the Baptist, kinsman to Jesus. The conception / birthing was possible only because God oversaw it.

At the same time Elizabeth was overjoyed with her pregnancy, Mary was overawed by Gabriel's annunciation of the Messiah's conception in her womb. However, Mary was not confronting the barrenness of old age; she was dealing with never having had sex for she was a teen-aged virgin.

The GOSPELS inform us that Mary's conception occurred miraculously by way of the Holy Spirit--the birthing God.

Both Abraham and Sarah as well as Zechariah and Elizabeth realized God's miraculous energy set loose in conceiving power within wombs that were beyond childbearing.

However, Joseph and Mary realized God's miraculous energy set loose in conceiving power within a virgin's womb. Both the elderly and the young came upon God's conceiving and birthing graces--miraculously so.

No wonder then that this Messiah, when seeing through His public ministry for three years, informed already born Nicodemus that he had to be "born".

How? Nicodemus, Jewish religious leader, asked of the Nazareth rabbi.

Jesus answered by telling him that the birthing was to be in his soul, not his body. Further, it was to be miraculously conceived by none other than the same Holy Spirit who had conceived Jesus in Mary's young womb.

From that day till this, believers have thanked God for the "born again experience"--a personal spiritual reality possible only because of God's gracious miracle energy.

All Christians then come into a child-to-Father relationship with God by being born in the soul--a personal Christmas, indeed. The Holy Spirit conceives in us His mercy by which we are adopted out of the family of satan into the family of God. There is no other explanation for this conversion happening than to state it as compassionate miracle.

Further, the wonder continues: each believer at some point in time dies. However, according to the gospel, he does not die, that is, he is not extinguished. Instead, the Holy Spirit conceives his soul into the birthing of heaven.

Just as an angel welcomed the conception of Jesus in Mary's womb--and later angelic hosts welcomed Jesus' birth--so the believer is welcomed into heaven's birthing by eternity's angels.

Just as shepherds welcomed the newborn Jesus in the manger, so those redeemed lambs who precede us to glory welcome believers birthed through heaven's gates.

It is an on-going message of wonder, grace and miracle: God is intent on conceiving and birthing life--from Adam till the end of earthly time.

Even eternal life is never-ending birthing goodness, holiness and love--that beyond human understanding and explanation. God sees to it.

Christmas, for this earth's stay, is then the apex of that marvelous story.

". . .glory to God in the highest. . ."

Such a blessing is Christmas!

The Holy Family: Poor is not warm and nice

The Holy Family was poor. Really poor. Mary and Joseph were escorted to no inn room. The baby was born in a smelly barn. Not very private. The straw sticks in their stall as well as in any stall. Just because your name is "Jesus" doesn't mean that the straw doesn't poke your skin through.

Anyhow, we cradle the nativity set beneath the Christmas tree each season as if the threesome were cuddly comfy. We even put wisemen there. However, the Book tells us that the wisemen did not appear till later when the three were out of the barn and into a house. (In addition, we position three wisemen when there might have been three, but then again there might have been three dozen. The Book doesn't tell us the number; we get the notion that three fits because the men brought three different kinds of gifts).

But no matter how warm and fuzzy we make the nativity set up each year, the original tableau was sore and lonely, uncertain and no doubt frightening. After all, what do you do with the data that relates Herod's swords in search of a newborn baby boy? Scary. That's what.

How did they get the funds to make the 80 mile trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem? Only heaven knows. And what did they live on while in the House of Bread? Only heaven knows. Further, where did they get the money to escape for an uncertain time frame into the strange, southern culture - Egypt?

Poor. The Holy Family might appear middle class taken care of beneath your tree; but the original scene was anything but.

I never want to be poor.

I was once. And it's no fun. It's no fun at all. I was not young, married, one child in college, another in prison, and a third in another country. I had no sons-in-law. I had no father. My mother was 2000 miles away. I had no father-in-law. I had a mother-in-law.

I had no job except substitute teaching. My wife was substitute teaching. That meant we had no health coverage. We had small salaries tacked onto one another.

We lost our comfortable home for what I came to call "God's tin can." It was a makeshift trailer set alongside a woodsy road. The interior was dark fake wood walls and an orange carpet and drapes from the 50s. The front screen door had a screen that was busted halfway out. We were fortunate: we did have an indoor bathroom with tub and shower and running water -hot and cold. We had a refrigerator and stove. Other than that, when the Maine snowstorms came to fill up much of the space around the trailer, we were banked in for sure.

It was at that time that I lost it.

I was so devastated by the circumstances by which I lost my job - loss of a middle class salary, health plan, house with garage - that I "cracked up." There are clinical terms I could use but I'd prefer to stay with the street language on that one. It took me about an hour and a half to get it together each morning - emotionally, that is. That Christmas came and went; I don't recall much of anything. I wasn't much fun to be around. The next Christmas was the same.

Going to teach on weekday mornings was my release back into cleanliness, modernity, convenience and logical conversations with pleasant people. But after I left the classroom for the trailer, then heavy depression cloaked me in. Nighttime was horrific.

Our bedroom was bedroom, wall shelves of sorts made into a computer stand and phone lodge, storage for clothes and hideaway for everything miscellaneous. The floors creaked. The walls whistled with the night winds. The windows let in snow trim.

I would wake up mornings thinking, "We're poor." Then for the umpteenth time I'd add up our meager salaries, check out how much we paid monthly for our own health coverage - Cobra's outrageous payments, and then pinch what was left for gas and food.

My wife and I kidded ourselves on Saturdays by going around visiting mobile home sites. We walked through them. Then we'd chat with the salesman in our middle class verbiage and concepts as if we had a wallet to back it up. We didn't. The salesman didn't know that; so he was cordial and spelled out all the detail. It was only some time later that we realized that there was no way we could bring off moving into a modular. We had no land. We had no money. We had no down payment. We had - we were poor.

Sometimes there are movies and books that glamorize being poor. There is no glamour to being poor. We have a whole history of children's stories about the pleasant poor. We have some nursery rhymes about the pleasant poor. The truth is there is nothing pleasant about being poor.

And yet I know the truth.

It is that in comparison to most of the world we were not poor. We were well off compared to the orphaned millions in Africa. We were quite well to do when put alongside the discarded alley children of India - those who prostitute themselves nightly, begging in the streets, bedding down in the gutters and sometimes not seeing morning's sun.

I can't even go there. There is truthfully no way I can begin to imagine the utter poor, no matter how my Christian heart attempts to do so. There is no way. And, in fact, I have no desire to do that. Being as poor as I was for two years plus is poor enough for me. That may sound selfish, but it's really not. It's not selfish; it's self-preserving. I don't want to crack up again - ever.

Now it's Christmas. We have numerous nativity sets we've collected over the years - one special one we bartered for outside Bethlehem in the mid-60s. There's another one given us by Tanzanian missionaries - soapstone figurines. And so forth and so forth.

Some December evenings I turn on the carols and sit to look at the nativity scenes. I go from one to the other. I try to figure out the emotions and thoughts of Mary and Joseph in that first nativity set.

But there's one concept I stay away from. Is it cowardice? It is pain avoidance? Perhaps. I'm not all that strong at this point; I'll admit that. But the concept is centering upon the Holy Family - sheltering the Son of the Almighty God, the King in the line of David - being dirt poor.

I just can't dwell on that for too long a moment. It's not pleasant. It's just not pleasant at all.

Christmas: Faith Traveling

The magi asked, "Where is the king of the Jews?" They were traveling--by faith. Persian astrologers, they were. And Gentiles at that. Somewhere along the way they had come to study the Jewish scripture scrolls, then acknowledge the Hebrew deity as the true God.

In their studies, they converged their astrological vocation with scriptural research--studying the heavens for the throne of God. In that, God spoke to them of the approaching birth of the Hebrew Messiah Christ. God informed them that if they as Gentiles followed the unique star, they would see for themselves the Jewish Anointed One.

Therefore, these fellows acted out their faith. They traveled with their faith in hand and heart. Over the hot sands, to the west, in search of a baby they had never laid eyes on. It was by simple faith that they made their trek.

So it is in your life and mine. We have never laid eyes on Jesus Christ nor seen His resurrected body nor gone to heaven to witness Him as intercessor at the right hand of the Father. But we have researched the scriptures and believe their account to be true. Therefore, from time to time this invisible deity displays Himself in our visible experiences. We, by faith, then come upon the marvelous sight.

Yet in this faith traveling, there are numerous Herods who would stand in the way, attempting to wreck the faith project. They are bloodthirsty, agents of hell, mean to the pits. Such should never surprise the faith child. Jesus promised as much. That is why He told His own to be as wise as snakes and harmless as doves. Wise as snakes!

How interesting that every time heaven breaks through with some marvelous holy extravaganza of love and mercy, hell gets as angry as angry can be. So it is that while God implanted Himself into human history, Herod became furious with envy. He stalked. He balked. He strung out his nerves to dry.

Then Herod put on the religious face. What a mask he wore. It was with such religious enthusiasm that he approached the magi to inform them that he too wanted to worship the new Hebrew King. If they would only tell him of the infant's whereabouts, Herod himself would bow before this tiny item.

So it was that Herod continued his hypocritical dance of envy by contacting chief priests and teachers of law. He asked the details of their prophetic records. Where? When? How?

In our faith journeys we come upon the outrageous counterfeits. How they wear their masks tightly. They know the language, the imagery, and the posture. They know the concepts and doctrines. They put on the display of piety. But their hearts are far from God. Again, Jesus warns His genuine grace children to be wary of the snakes.

How sad that the chief priests and teachers of the law could inform Herod of the prophetic piece and yet be so utterly far from its personal truth. It would be these very religious play actors who would some day plot the murder of the infant-grown-adult. So near, so far. How often has that duo played itself out for the ruin of those on stage.

It is then with the gift of discernment that God provides the sincere grace child with the spiritual perception to see through the mask. This spiritual present enables the true believer to continue the faith journey without being detoured by those who would distract to destroy.

So it was that the magi made the trip--following the star. Yet how did they discern in the broad daylight? It was then that they simply trudged forward by faith alone. Yet in the dark of night, they would again catch the gleam.

So it is with our faith journeys. We come into night seasons of confusion and doubt, trouble and depression. Can we go another step? Who would care? Who will lead us? The nighttime clouds cover the star shine. We cannot see it. Have we lost it completely?

No. As we keep true to the journey, the star appears again in the darkest night. Then we know anew that God has not left us; He is still where He has always been--faithful to those children on the trek.

Eventually the magi reached Bethlehem. The Jewish shepherds had preceded them in the cave stall. But now the Gentile astrologers would come upon the Hebrew Christ in a house. No wonder Jesus later told His own that He came to the Jew first and then the Gentile. So it had been since Bethlehem's start. Yet it was for all mankind--"For God who loved the world"--that the Messiah Babe laid in the manger. It was for all that He would die upon the tree.

The Christmas account then happily relates that the magi's hearts were overjoyed with their sight discovery. Their faith had led them to the visible God in the cow's trough. There he was, for certain!

What if they had given up? What if they had doubted and turned back? What if they had counted the cost and concluded it was fool-hearty? Then they would not have seen. Their faith would have crumbled. They would have paid with the loss of their very destinies.

But they did not renege. They remained true to the close. Their faith yielded its own reward--sight!

And so it is with each of us--we make the journey to the close, then we see. We come upon heaven's own reward--sight!

It was then with such utter ecstasy that these grown men bent their knees before the child. They flung their gold, frankincense, and myrrh--gushing forth with praise and worship. They were beside themselves, no doubt tears streaming down their cheeks. The hot sands were behind them. The babe was before them. They had stayed true to the vision; God had remained true to His promise.

So it is with you and me. We find out that as we make the faith journey, there are days when we wonder what is going on. Can we make it to the close? Will it prove us the utter fools? Yet we proceed. And when we do, we realize one certainty. God never left the very spot where He promised to meet us. God has been there all along.

If the magi had turned back somewhere along the westward trail, Jesus would still have been waiting in the Bethlehem cow stall. But they would have missed Him--totally.

If we had turned back, God would still be very much there. If we had forsaken the promise, the journey, the prize, God would still be very much there. God remains, though others falter.

Thank heaven the magi remained constant and so came upon The Constant. No wonder their hearts were pounding for joy abounding! And so it is the same with us, as we remain loyal to the faith, to the close of the journey.

J. Grant Swank Jr. Magic City Column

J. Grant Swank Jr.
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Read: http://jgrantswankjr.blogspot.com/