My Birthday is Today, Its Christmas Eve

Today is the sixty-third anniversary of my birth. My mother tells me that she first thought it great that I was born on Christmas Eve. In a time when mothers were often kept for a much longer period, she was allowed to go home sooner because of the Christmas season. My mother's birth was on the 30th, my sister's January 10th. My mother and father was married on the 23rd - six years before I was born. My grandparent's anniversary was also on the 24th (or thereabouts). My sister's first marriage was on the 21st of December. Her oldest child, Jeff, died at age twenty five, on my mother's birthday. Terri and I lost our first child, Michelle, at her birth, on the 31st of December 1974.

Our Savior's birth is customarily and traditionally celebrated by most Western Christians on the 25th of December. It was, according to the Scriptures, a joyous day. It was a day worthy of Angelic praise. The shepherds are given an announcement from Heaven saying that a Savior is born that night. They are told the event was one of great joy.They initially experienced great fear. While they had the news, they did not yet have the full meaning of that Good News. They traveled to where the baby lay, on the night of his birth. They are moved by wonderment. They inform Mary and Joseph about the Angels and their message. They begin to spread the news to anyone who would listen to them. We are told, by inference, that Mary grows somber and contemplative.  She tried to hold this revelation in her heart, but it is too big for any human heart of capture or the human mind to fully comprehend.

I wonder if Mary and Joseph, with all the shepherds and all the residence of Bethlehem retold this story throughout their lives or, with the passage of time, it all seemed dreamlike.

Thoughts such as these most often occupy my mind on the day of my birth. After all, I have a message of Christmas to present tonight at our traditional service of worship. How strange it would be for me to stand in the pulpit and say, "I bring to you this night, a message of great joy. To you, sixty-three years ago, was born the man who stands before you." What hope do I bring? What salvation to I secure for anyone? So on a day when I might, and do, entertain celebratory thoughts concerning my temporal  existence on this mortal coil, and how brief it seems to me, breaking through this self absorptive narcissism is the thoughts of another's birth. A birth, unlike mind, that bears an eternal weight of glory. (Though I am promised to one day share some semblance of that glory.)

In my own insignificant biography, the last week of the year is occupied by memories of pain and somber joy - of life, and death, of hopes realized and hopes snatched away. As He is throughout the entire year, so He is on this day - a bright hope in the midst of lesser hope and even real sorrow. Hope and sorrow, are at the core our Lord's life as well.

On this night, my Savior is born - who is the Christ, the Son of the Ever Living God. As the shepherds became and Mary remained, we too can be filled with "the wonder of His love."

Merry Christmas, my friends.