Lifebridge Church Blog

It’s 3 a.m. and it is POURING. Normally, I’d just roll over and go back to sleep, but tonight the rain is a problem. Later on this evening we have our Christmas in a Barn. , so all this rain means that mud is going to be a major issue. Where do we park? How do we get people to the barn? Wh? . . . what a MESS.

And, therein lies maybe the most important message of all at Christmas. It IS a mess. The world is a mess. Our lives are a mess. Christmas is anything but neat and tidy. The whole reasons Christmas happened in the first place is because Jesus was willing to let go of the comforts and neatness of heaven to enter into a world where things always eventually end up going wrong.

A small part of me might be envious tonight as we slosh through mud while others get to worship in the comforts of a more predictable church environment. But, the deeper side of me is glad. Glad for the rain, the mud, the hay bales we’ll be sitting on. thankful for the messy reminder of why we needed a Savior in the first place.

Christmas is when you pull out all the stops.  The decorations, the lights, the music . . . whatever it takes to capture the “magical Christmas feel” that we all so crave.  For me, that moment always came at the end of the Christmas service, when the ushers would hand out candles, the lights would be turned down low, and the whole church would sing Silent Night.  Bam.  Christmas MAGIC. 

I still love the beautiful/magical side of Christmas . . . but I’ve started to wonder if that’s really the thing we should be pursuing.  Last year, our church held our Christmas Eve service in a barn . . . and it touched me in a completely different way than Christmas services ever have.  There was an ugly beat up old barn, hay, cow manure, and a bunch of people.   No beautiful Christmas tree, no angelic choirs, not even the candles at the end (though we did sing Silent Night!)  Just the stark simplicity that took us back to the humble beginning that Jesus chose 2000 years ago. 

 In his Divine wisdom, Christ chose a rather plain entrance into the world.  Just a barn, a nothing town in the middle of nowhere,  no royalty or religion to be found anywhere.  He came because the people he loved so much were dying in their sin, and our only hope was a Savior who would step into the mess and the ugliness of our time and space to do something about it.  It wasn’t pretty.  It wasn’t magical.

Of all places, Jesus picked a dirty old barn to start his earthly journey, so we’re going to do the same thing in a little over a week.  Maybe it will rain.  Maybe it will be cold and miserable and there won’t be any of that Christmas magic we all love so much.  Maybe that’s the point.