There is scandal, mystery, and glory in Christmas. The darkness breaks and hope awakes in the heart once more. I sometimes feel odd, acting as if Christ isn't born at Christmas, or like he really just died on Good Friday. Neither are true and the emulative nature of our holiest observances is a little immature and cultic sometimes.
But we need it, that feeling of dawn breaking , that heart-taking, soul-rending birth of hope on Christmas. We need it every single day. We need it, at least, once a year. As play-acting as advent and Good Friday might be, without the birth of hope once more, without the renewal of knowledge as to what it really means, we miss so much of the point.
Darkness turned to dawn at Christmas, but sometimes, we forget that we're still living in that dawn. We're actually living in a more glorious dawn, closer now to the completion and the Kingdom than we were when Christ became man. But he took up dwelling among us for a time, and those 30-odd years were as magical as anything, as deeply and lightly as that word can be used when talking about Jesus. God was here. And yet, he still is. We can't touch him, indeed, but he never left.
And that's what Christmas is...a celebration but also a remembrance and a re-embrace.
-Zack
"O shepherds, find thy goal"
-French Carol
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