“Splendor and majesty are before Him; strength and joy in His dwelling place.”
Like many of us, I love Christmas.
The entire season is captivating and enchanting to me. It’s a thrill of hope and an anchor of peace. It echoes with some of my most joyful, anticipatory, and safe childhood memories– when everyone was together, everything was exciting, and all was well – and it carries on in my adult years with traditions, surprises, and stories.
But the more I examine what makes Christmas so meaningful to me, the more I realize that what we often call Christmas “magic” is really just a glimmer of majesty. Everything we treasure about Christmas finds its deepest meaning in Christ.
In the words of C.S. Lewis, our minds were meant to run “back up the sunbeam to the sun” and find at the source of every Christmas joy the One who alone can make our joy complete (John 15:11). This season, we can use the sunbeams of Christmas “magic” to point a searching world to His majesty.
- Kindness. The season seems to soften each of us to kindness – we are arrested by displays of generosity and stirred to care deeply for others, both those closest to us and the hurting around us. Perhaps we most treasure the compassion and charity of the season because it was at the very first Christmas that the “lovingkindness of God our Savior appeared” (Titus 3:4), commissioning us to a life in which we “love kindness” too, at Christmas and always (Micah 6:8).
- Calm. We cherish the often unplanned moments of calm that grace us like a rare silent night in the midst of hurry. So, too, the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6) came to bring his peace to a troubled earth in the gentle meekness of an infant.
- Worship. We repeat the classic carols of Christmas, preserved across centuries and generations – because we were created and called to worship and remember together, celebrating all that God has done for and through His people for His namesake, as we will with the angels singing around His throne now and into eternity.
- Anticipation. The suspense and excitement we still feel over the anticipation of the season echoes the long and hopeful waiting for a Messiah through the centuries before His birth, a longing culminating in the most unexpected, generous, and personally-suited gift of Jesus.
- Wonder. Dating back to our childhoods, many of us remember a kind of wonder over the season, as if each Christmas swept us up into a story of traditions, gatherings, carols, and surprises woven together by parents, grandparents, and others who loved and cared for us. The Christmases weren’t perfect. Heartbreaks, loneliness, disappointment, or loss haunted some. But each returning season may have whispered a thrill of hope that a grand Storyteller is still writing stories of incarnation – the majesty of heaven breaking into our mundane and enchanting us with wonder.
This real majesty far exceeds any illusion of “Christmas magic” – as much as Christ exceeds any earthly trappings we use to celebrate this season. Splendor and majesty are before Him; strength and joy are in His dwelling place (1 Chronicles 16:27).
And they are available to us (this Christmas and always) in Him.
Written by Kaitlin Febles, Guest Contributor
MORE ABOUT THE JESUS OF CHRISTMAS
Read “Exchanging the Gift of Glory” by Jonathan Munson
