The Perfect Christmas?

“This Christmas will be perfect,” I thought as I drove over the long road to our new home.  Our family had been living apart for about three months because my husband was finishing up one job and I had started a new one.  We were transporting the final load of boxes, furniture and family members to our new home.  

I imagined playing Scrabble, leisurely sipping hot chocolate, enjoying our favorite Christmas shows, and sitting around a crackling fire.  Platters of fresh-baked cookies graced the scene. Of course, the house would be sparkling clean and beautifully decorated, shining with Christmas lights.  Everyone would be laughing and happy. Maybe there would even be snow outside. 

Christmas day didn’t quite turn out according to my dreams, though.  Piles of boxes and bags lined every room. My husband and daughter were stretched out in the cluttered living room, suffering with the flu. Oh, and it was snowing, but we still had things to unload from the trailer outside. No cookies were baked and no Christmas lights were hung. Sharp words had been spoken and tears shed.  My frustration meter was reading at highest levels. 

I began to think about how Joseph and Mary must have felt when they couldn’t find a place to stay.  They’d already had to take a trip which was physically exhausting and difficult financially. It must have felt unreasonable and unfair to be required to go to Bethlehem at that time.   Although they were simple people, a stable certainly wouldn’t have been the place they would have chosen for Mary to give birth. While Christmas cards render the stable as cozy and clean with the animals standing silently around the manger, it would have been noisy and smelly, maybe wet and cold. They were far from home without support or help. That first Christmas was certainly not perfect.  

Christ himself was a sharp contrast to the perfect Messiah that people had imagined.  They were looking for a warrior king, one who would defeat Rome and deliver the Jewish nation.  Jesus didn’t fit into their picture at all, as an infant in a manger or as a man later on.  

Yet Christ, the Son of God, the gift of Christmas, was perfect.  He came into our ordinary, imperfect lives…into hectic uncertainty, into frustration and despair, into pain and difficulty. Isaiah called Christ a “Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.”  Christ is familiar with all of the imperfect things that fill our lives, and He alone can bring peace, hope, and life into the messy “stable” where we are.  

That Christmas, amid the moving boxes and chaos and flu germs, I learned just a little bit more about His perfection.  I did not need a perfect Christmas. I needed, and still need, the perfect Christ. Whatever the circumstances and wherever I am, His grace can provide everything I need.  

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