Last night my family and some friends made our yearly trek to HollyWild. HollyWild is an animal farm that houses famous animals that are seen in movies and major motion pictures. Every year they have Christmas lights, petting zoos, bonfires and overpriced jump machines. We have a 4 year old, so this is her highlight every Christmas season. Tonight was a mess. It was foggy, rainy and extra stinky. We barely found the place, we complained the whole time and we strained to see the exhibits because of the fog. But...then again it's like this every year we go. Every year our car gets muddy and we leave covered in hand sanitizer so we do not get salmonella from feeding the goats out of our hands.
However.....
This year was different. As we were driving out, we passed full-size paintings of Jesus being baptized, Jesus feeding the multitudes, Jesus surrounded by children, pictures of Jesus in his resurrected body high above the clouds, and many other pictures of the amazing life ofJesus. In that moment I realized that the messiness of the night was a perfect setting for the timeless story of our redemption. Jesus was born into our mess! He was nestled as a child in the lowliest bassinet, strangly resembling a feeding troth.
Isn't this the story of Christmas? God sending his Son to invade the mess that we had made. His birth was just the prophetic declaration that things were now in the process of being cleansed. We are still in that process because of the manger. We are still looking through the window of the nativity, reveling in the fact that God moved into our brokenness so that He might begin the restoration process.
Questions:
* What mess do you need Jesus to cleanse?
* How do the conditions of the birth of Jesus, relate to your life?
* What's your story of personal redemption? Tell it to your children and your children's children!
Rich Butler
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