Friday, December 25, 2009

An Ambivalent Christmas

Though I love Christmas, it always holds a bit of ambivalence for me. Jesus is born and worshiped, yet the prophecies even before his birth tell of wretched, horrible things to come, that he will be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

This Christmas the ambivalence is even greater. I am to be celebrating the Christ child while still mourning the death of my own. I'm afraid there isn't much room in my heart for the celebrating this year. My Christmas wish list changed from nursing dresses and diaper covers to that new book by Scot McKnight and maybe some paint for the bathroom. This just isn't how it was supposed to be, and yet, it is.

So here we are at Christmas, twelve days of it in fact. A child is born to die so that others might live, even those who who never had to chance to take a breath. It is deserving of both joy and sorrow. I wonder if these paradoxes are obvious those in the heavenlies, or only to those of us on this side of the veil.

No comments:

Post a Comment