Christmas is unwrapped in Holy disorder. It is God’s fault. Life escalates the excitement, stress, and extra activities during this season.
A census issued by Caesar Augustus wasn’t great timing as far as Mary and Joseph were concerned. Who wants to travel the week of your due date? Imagine Mary’s discomfort at nine months pregnant riding a donkey. For Joseph, there was the pressure of finding lodging in an over populated Bethlehem.
Who cleaned out the manger and set up the delivery corner in the stable where Christ was born? Who tidied up the birthing mess? What does one do with unexpected shepherds showing up shortly after the birth? Coffee and cookies?
Perhaps the Christmas Pageant captures the Holy best when the angels stumble over their lines, the shepherds miss their cue, or Joseph picks his nose. Children tend to embrace the Holy hidden in our humanness. Adults often miss it.
This year embrace the messy house, crowded mall, extra baking, unexpected company, and the disarray of Christmas week. Sometimes disorder is Holy.
What Holy disorder is unwrapping for you this week?
In Him together, Susan Gaddis
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Everything for me seems to be in total disarray this year. No kids and grandkids will be gathering around my tree. No Christmas dinner cooking in my oven. Missed the Christmas program at church. Didn’t play my violin in the Messiah performance. Somehow didn’t plan to attend ANY kind of special Christmas event. No…this year we did a BUNCH of driving, and will do more this coming weekend, because this year our presence with our parents is the way we are celebrating. Honoring them. And oh, how I hope God is honored too. I feel messy this year.
In 2002, I lost my mom five days before Christmas and we celebrated her memorial on the 23rd. That was a messy and sad Christmas for me. But giving of yourself is the best gift of all and I treasure the memory of those sad and busy days. God bless you, Jeanette, as your traveling messes up your Christmas and feel comforted that are right where you are suppose to be this Christmas–giving of yourself.
Having the house torn apart; having furniture stacked all around me in my office; and dealing with a nasty head cold– doing all this so we can have a new floor put in just in time for Christmas. What were we thinking! It is looking nice, but it is a lot of work, and company arrives tomorrow. We are not as young as we used to be, and In ‘n Out for Christmas dinner is lookin’ better and better! Too sick to go to the Christmas musical, as well. Certainly got the disorder part down–now where in the world did I put that holy? 🙂