I watched the Polar Express for some inexplicable reason the other night and in the end the boy received the "first gift of Christmas" - a reindeer bell from Santa's own sleigh team. I hate to break the news to them but that was not the first gift of Christmas. Although it was a wonderful, wonderful story about believing in Santa Claus, it was the secular version of Christmas. ABG, right? (anything but God)
However, as I am sure all good Christians know, the first gift of Christmas was NOT, I repeat NOT, a sleigh bell. The first gift of the first Christmas was a baby. We must ponder that.
God saw fit to empty himself of his own Godhood, enter into his own creation, and become one of us. Not as a king, mind you; which would have been a heck of a lot easier (and probably the route I would have taken). No, he came to a country under foreign rule, into a poor family without a roof over its head, as a baby. He could not possibly have come here any smaller. He could not have into a lower social status. He could not have come into a more vulnerable place in the world.
God's seems to have a theme going here, and it's was the same theme 30 years later when he said to take the least prestigious seat at the banquet table; or that the first shall be last and the last, first; or that he, himself, came to serve, not be served. The theme that ran through everything he ever said and did was humility. Yet, humility is the hardest thing for humans to do.
Do you think God knew that?
All that said, this is not my Christmas message. That will come in a couple of days. I just had to take care of this Polar Express thing.
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