A few days ago, we looked at where Christmas week found us. The “most wonderful time of the year” is also often the busiest time as well. Between the presents, the food, and the family time, expectations run high and the hours run short. But the day after Christmas has a quietness about it. It’s a day to pause and catch our breath. The big holiday is over but regular life hasn’t started up again just yet. Use this day as a chance to reflect before the new year brings a new set of expectations.
Are you enjoying a slower morning with family all around? Are you exhausted, physically or emotionally, from the busyness of the past month? Wherever you find yourself, take a few moments to reorient yourself. Let the noise of the last few days recede to the background.
Over the last few weeks, we’ve looked at how Jesus is both fully man and fully God. He understands our struggles and weeps with us in our brokenness (Hebrews 4:15, John 11:35). He was tempted to sin, yet He didn’t. He is not simply an outside observer of our broken world. He understands the depths of heartache more than we ever will. He is fully human. He understands everything you are walking through, the highs, lows, and everything in between.
And yet He is also fully God. He is not just an empathetic friend with a shoulder to cry on. He is the Lord Almighty who spoke galaxies into existence. He painted the colors of every flower on earth and sent the first electrons flying around microscopic atoms. Jesus is the God who designed you—down to every detail of your physical body and your gifts and strengths. Jesus is God who is willing and able to save you from your sin.
In Genesis 3:8, we read about God walking in the garden of Eden. “They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” A few verses earlier, Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, bringing sin into the world. Their choice to disobey God was like an earthquake that rocked the core of creation. We still feel the aftershocks to this day. God could have instantly appeared and punished them for their crime. It would have been just.
But He didn’t. Instead, He walked in the garden. He walked and talked with them. He stayed with them.
If the entrance of sin rocked the world way back in the garden, the birth of Jesus did even more. The Creator God chose to enter His own creation as a vulnerable, tiny newborn. As he grew from a baby to a toddler, He took His first steps and learned to walk as every child does. Once again, God walked with His people in His creation. As miraculous as the incarnation is, we celebrate it because it points to another event. Christmas marks the implementation of a long-awaited rescue mission. When Jesus entered our world, He did so fully knowing that He would go to the cross. He died a gruesome death on the cross in our place, paying the price for our sin that we could never pay. But when Jesus walked out of the tomb on Easter morning, those steps shook creation in a new way. The price had been paid. Jesus had conquered death. As we said yesterday, if you ever needed a sign that God love you and wants to be with you, Jesus is it. The story of His birth, life, death, and resurrection is God shouting that He loves His world, including you.
