Yeah ... all that was to say that I will be posting a very short Christmas-themed video every day leading up to Christmas starting this Saturday. They are each under 30-seconds. Consider them bite-sized morsels for the eyes.
Disclaimer: the videos are not making fun of any of the events surrounding the birth of Jesus!
As I was thinking about "the first Christmas" (i.e. when Jesus was born), I had an interesting thought. This time of year ushers in a surplus of whimsical, magical feelings and glowy images. We see the nativity scene in soft colors with serene looks on every face and tender messages typed underneath. Our music reinforces the feathery, nebulous aura surrounding the event: the song "Silent Night" paints the night as encapsulated in unearthly calmness, untouched by the various tremors and disruptions of normal nights.
It's truly wonderful that the Christ child was born—but was the night really so undisturbed? Didn't thefts and rapes still happen? Didn't the cattle low (as even the song Silent Night says, ironically)? Didn't frazzled innkeepers become gruff? Chickens still squawked, mosquitoes still bit, people still sweat, spouses still had tiffs. In other words, the moment wasn't suspended in time, free from all the bothers of life. Jesus didn't come to earth in a bubble of mystical, luminous tranquility. That, I think, is one of the beauties of it: for all of the world's grime, bickering, backbiting, stealing, and turmoil, Jesus still came. He was born into the midst of it. He entered real—albeit sometimes ugly—life because He really cares for us.
It's truly wonderful that the Christ child was born—but was the night really so undisturbed? Didn't thefts and rapes still happen? Didn't the cattle low (as even the song Silent Night says, ironically)? Didn't frazzled innkeepers become gruff? Chickens still squawked, mosquitoes still bit, people still sweat, spouses still had tiffs. In other words, the moment wasn't suspended in time, free from all the bothers of life. Jesus didn't come to earth in a bubble of mystical, luminous tranquility. That, I think, is one of the beauties of it: for all of the world's grime, bickering, backbiting, stealing, and turmoil, Jesus still came. He was born into the midst of it. He entered real—albeit sometimes ugly—life because He really cares for us.
"For God so loved the (dirty, sinful, raucous) world, He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life." (John 3:16; italicized words added)
I can't say exactly how that first Christmas looked; I wasn't there. But whether or not a halo of angelic light gilded Jesus's infant brow, He was born of a virgin and wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger inside a stable. That is the point of the short Christmas videos: I want to remember that Jesus's birth is a reality. He was born. He was born into this real world as a real man surrounded by real people doing people things, and real animals doing animal things. Remember Him this Christmas.
Jordan "Raw and Real" Powell
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