Come Let Us Adore Him

Sitting in the drive-thru of KFC tonight I had K-LOVE on which isn't abnormal, especially when my iPod is dead, and a song came on which isn't abnormal either since it's K-LOVE and the radio station plays music almost 24/7. The song was "Christmas Is" by Francesca Battistelli and it was the first time I had heard it. As I'm waiting for my turn to order I think it's a weird song to be playing on K-LOVE only because I have this thing about playing non-religious Christmas songs in church (and I guess that pet peeve also translates to Christian radio). But then the song gets to the second to last verse, and it suddenly becomes about Jesus for two lines and that's the song. 

Seriously?

This is not going to be a blog post that rants against Francesca Battistelli (because I actually like several of her songs) and there's no point in ranting. Ranting never got anyone anywhere, but hopefully this post will be taken as a jumping off point for discussion and thought. 

I love Christmas songs. I have my favorites that I will willingly play on repeat until almost the end of January and not all of them are religiously orientated. But this is Christmas a time we Christians should take to really focus on what the holiday is about. (Cue Linus).

This is not to say that the presents and the trees and the lights aren't wonderful and beautiful. They are.  They're a glorious part to the holiday but that's only the surface, a superficial surface. Christmas would still happen without the lights and the trees and the presents. Christmas would still happen even if it was not a federally recognized holiday and businesses and government continued on as usual on December 25th. Christmas would still happen because it's the time when the Church actively remembers and celebrates the First Coming of Christ and His coming transcends everything that we know.

Christmas is more than just Jesus' birthday.  There was nothing normal about Jesus' birth just like there was nothing normal about His life or His death and certainly not His resurrection. There was nothing and is nothing normal about Jesus Christ and so Christmas should not be construed to be a normal birthday. A normal holiday.

God became a man at Christmas. One third of the Holy Trinity became fully human while still retaining His full divinity. There is a part of the Triune who sits at the right hand of God the Father as a Man. A human. In this man named Jesus Christ we have that perfect human who fulfilled the Law and the Prophets and He was able to do it because He was not only Man but God. Fully man and fully God.

Can you see what I'm getting at? We're not celebrating anything normal. Something that happens every day. We shouldn't treat Christmas cheaply. Without Christmas we could not have Easter. We Christians take a lot of pride in Easter (which we should) but that same pride and awe doesn't seem to appear at Christmas. We're so in awe of the fact that Jesus Christ lived and died and rose again that we forget that in order to live and die and rise again He first had to be born.

So come let us adore him. Let us worship the newborn king, this baby who is fully God and fully man; this baby whose purpose was to live, to die, to rise; the baby who to come again, the conquering king.

Come let us adore him, Christ the Lord.