The Wonder of Christmas

I’ve been meaning to write this for a while. Well, I’ve been trying to write this for a while. Between finals and a case of writer’s block that I just can’t seem to kick, I haven’t been able to get it into writing. Perhaps it’s because I’m still processing. Perhaps it’s because I have no idea how I want to present this story. Perhaps… I don’t know.

I have always loved Christmas, but in recent years, I’ve started to find the Christmas season to be a little bit in conflict with the rest of my schedule, especially school. This year, as my younger siblings kept me updated on the exact number of days until Christmas, I found myself counting down the days to the end of the semester. Don’t get me wrong, I love school, I love BCS, I love what I’m learning… but between seventeen credits, commuting, and everything to sort out with my car, and my back and shoulder, and filing a medical claim with the insurance company from my car accident in October, I found myself stretched a little thin by the end of the semester. As my younger siblings were filled with wonder at the Christmas season, praying for a little snow to make it all just right, I quietly thanked God that I had only had to drive through the snow one morning so far, and went back to trying to keep Ashurbanipal and Ashurnassurpal straight. One of them made Pharaoh someone-or-other the sole ruler of Egypt, and the other one washed his weapons in the Mediterranean while not attacking Omri of Israel.

One afternoon, I found myself lying on the floor trying to ease the tension in my upper back, while also trying to study Environmental Science (Sidenote: there isn’t really a good way to read a large, floppy textbook while lying on your back.) My two youngest sisters were sitting next to the Christmas tree playing Sunday school.

“And then Zacheus came….”

“No, Zanna, Zacheus was in a tree.”

“God told Zacheus to climb down, because we might fall out of trees.”

“No, Zanna, that’s not the Christmas story! Jesus was born on Christmas because he loves us!”

As their child-like voices told a slightly scrambled version of the Christmas story (Praise had the story almost entirely right, but I think Zanna added Zacheus coming down out of the tree to see baby Jesus in the end...) I was struck by the wonder in their voices. They both knew the Christmas story, but they both found the story to be new, and exciting! Part of me didn’t. I still loved the story, but I had kind of lost my wonder. I was exhausted, and busy, and it didn’t look or feel like Christmas!

I got up off the floor, deciding that coffee at four in the afternoon was a good idea, because without it I might not make it to Mounds View and back that evening. That was my third day in a row that I had shot past my self-imposed one cup a day limit. Probably not a good habit, but I had less than two weeks before I went on break. And why was I always in more pain after visiting the physical therapist than I was before?

I hadn’t actually looked at what the focus for ESL was that night. Probably Christmas. That would make sense. I could read the handout when I got there. That gave me half an hour to eat supper and get a start on Friday’s reading.

About an hour later, I walked into the room full of talking, laughing students and their tutors, and I couldn’t help but smile. Most of the students are math or science majors, either on the Visiting Scholars program, or a semester abroad. There’s a small handful of liberal arts students, I think all of them studying sociology. You can kind of spot the liberal arts majors right away. In that way, it sort of reminded me of being at the U of M for my older brother’s graduation. There’s something about engineers that sets them apart from sociology students, and vice-versa, regardless of language or culture.

Glancing at the handout, I was surprised to find that it wasn’t the usual format, with questions at the end of each paragraph. Instead, the entire page, front and back, was the Christmas story. The handout had a few questions throughout, one of the first being, “Have you heard this story before?” For some reason, I expected the answer to be yes. It wasn’t.

It took a second for that to sink in. I was talking to an adult who had never heard the Christmas story before. I had told the Christmas story to little kids, who had all the details, scrambled together and randomly inserted Zacheus at the end, but it had never occurred to me that I interacted with someone on a weekly basis who had never heard the story of how Christ came to earth.

Suddenly, I felt utterly unprepared and incompetent. I wasn’t ready to walk someone through the Christmas story when they had never heard it before! And what if I couldn’t communicate it well enough? When I first started volunteering with All Nations ESL, I had a student whose English was, well, better than mine some of the time. And she was familiar with Christianity, to the point that she wanted to discuss the problem of evil. But she had gone home for a month, and my new student hadn’t been in the US as long, and wasn’t as fluent in English, and what if I couldn’t explain the Christmas story to her in a way that would make sense?

Pull yourself together, I told myself. If there’s one story you know better than anything else, it’s this one.

As she read through, paragraph by paragraph, pausing to ask for explanation, clarify pronunciation, and define words, I found myself doing something I had honestly never anticipated having the opportunity to do. I was presenting the gospel to someone who had never heard it before, at least, not in its entirety.

It is an incredible, humbling wonder to be able to share the story of Christmas with someone who has never heard it before. With the conversation starter handout, and a piece of blank paper, I found myself explaining what a prophecy was, why Jesus needed to be born, explaining that Jesus was born of a virgin, why Herod felt threatened when the Magi came looking for a newborn King, and how so many people missed what was right in front of them because they were looking for a King who would save them from Rome, when in reality, Jesus came to save all of humanity from sin. I found myself explaining what sin was, and how Adam and Eve had rebelled against God when they were in the Garden of Eden. As I looked at my poorly sketched timeline, showing the garden, the prophets that God had sent to Israel, and the way that all of it pointed to the cross, I felt my excitement growing. Jesus came to fulfill all of history!

It's a story I know so well, love so much, and yet rarely think about. I don't wonder at it the way I used to.

Until I was explaining it to someone who had never heard it before. Until, in her halting English, she told me that she thought the story was difficult, incredible, and something she didn't know the word for.

The Christmas story is so incredible, so difficult, so beautiful, so deep, and yet… so simple. I had heard my little sister explain it earlier that day. The story of God stepping into the world He created is so simple, that a five year old can explain it.

And at the same time, it is so incredible, that an adult can wonder at it.