Forty-Four

Christmastime.  I am thankful for Christmastime.

I'm thankful that I can watch my favorite Christmas movies.

My All-Time Favorite Christmas Movies 

1. The Muppet Christmas Carol
2. The Year Without a Santa Claus
3. Miracle on 34th Street (New/Old)
4. Santa Clause is Coming to Town
5. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

I'm thankful that I can read my favorite Christmas story (well, second favorite...my first being found in the Bible).

I'm thankful I can sing along to my favorite Christmas songs and carols.

My Top 10 for 2010 (in no particular order)

1. The Night Before Christmas - Brandon Heath
2. I Pray on Christmas - Dave Barnes...I actually just love this whole CD!
3. I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day - Casting Crowns
4. We Need a Little Christmas - Glee
5. How Many Kings - downhere
6. Born in Bethlehem - Third Day
7. Go Tell It On the Mountain - Tenth Avenue
8. Have a Holly Jolly Christmas - Burl Ives
9. The 12 Days of Christmas - Straight No Chaser
10. The Littler Drummer Boy - Jars of Clay

*I didn't know how hard it would be to pick just 10...so here are my top five favorite classic Holiday staples

1. Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer - Dr. Elmo (This is my mother's favorite...and well, it wouldn't be Christmastime without it).
2. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer - Burl Ives
3. Caroling, Caroling - Nat King Cole
4. O Come O Come Emmanuel - Shane and Shane (I know this isn't the "classic version...but I love it lots!)
5. White Christmas - Bing Crosby 

But while all these things are nice and I enjoy them, they're not what I'm most thankful for this Christmas.

I'm thankful the love that came down at Christmas.  I'm thankful for a love that left all perfection and entered into the pain and suffering.  I'm thankful for a love that went beyond all comforts to bring me life.  

Two nights ago I finished reading a novella entitled Unafraid.  Unfraid is apart of the Lineage of Grace series by Francine Rivers (the author of the popular and amazing book Redeeming Love).  The series is a fictional account of the five women listed in the genealogy of Christ. Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary.  Though fiction the books paint a beautiful picture of the heart of God and how His purpose to redeem the world was done in some quite unconventional ways.  Actually scandalous is probably a more appropriate term.  But each book offers the reminder that God takes that which is intended for evil and creates something magnificent out of it.  

Unfraid is the account of Mary.  When I put down this book on Saturday night God impressed two things upon my heart.

First.  Choice.  

God goes to extraordinary lengths to reveal to us His love.  But we have to choose to accept it.     Throughout the story Mary often becomes frustrated that her own family, her community, and even her other children don't seem to accept Jesus for who He is.  Several times Mary questions Jesus as to why He doesn't make them believe.  Pleading on their behalf that He open their eyes.  Each time Jesus lovingly says to her, "They have to choose."  He made Himself known but it was still their choice to accept Him.  He makes Himself known, but it is still our choice. 

God wants to use us in mighty ways to be His hands and feet.  But we have to choose to allow Him to use us.  We have to choose obedience.  Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, and the wise men each choose to do what God asked of them.  Mary choose to carry the Messiah.  She didn't count the cost of how her family and community would perceive her.  She said yes.  Joseph choose to marry Mary anyway despite speculations when called God told him to.  He choose to go against what others would say about him and how this would effect him in order to be obedient to God.  The shepherds choose to go and see the baby and they choose to tell others.  The wise men choose to follow the star.  They also choose not to return to King Herod.  God calls us to be obedient to what He asks of us.  But the choice is always ours.

Second.  Jesus Christ who had all the glory and honor choose to step into a scandal and face rejection from the beginning for me.  Though it was fiction Rivers writes in Unfraid of many people who find the details of Mary's pregnancy quite scandalous.  No one believes her and Joseph's story.  They all think these two came up with the wild tell in order to cover up their sin.  They are rejected by their own family.  From the very beginning Jesus is rejected.  And as He grows up He fulfills the prophesy in Isaiah that says He would be rejected by many.  

As I thought about the scandal and rejection in Jesus' life I started to think of a Robbie Seay Band song.  I thought it was called "Beautiful, Scandalous Grace."  But when I pulled it up on my itunes I discovered I had the last word wrong.  "Beautiful, Scandalous Night."  I thought it was about His birth, though.  And how in the mist of a scandal the beauty of grace and redemption came down one night in something so innocent.  But the song is about another scandalous night in His life.  The night the price was paid.  The night the depths of His love and how far He'd go to show it us was painfully evident.  And though that night brought death, death couldn't claim Him as its own.   Because He is Life.  And that Life arose three days later.  Redemption and grace now ours.

"Beautiful, Scandalous Night"

Go on up to the mountain of mercy
To the crimson perpetual tide
Kneel down on the shore
Be thirsty no more
Go under and be purified

Follow Christ to the holy mountain
Sinner sorry and wrecked by the fall
Cleanse your heart and your soul
In the fountain that flowed
For you and for me and for all

At the wonderful, tragic, mysterious tree
On that beautiful, scandalous night you and me
Were atoned by His blood and forever washed white
On that beautiful, scandalous night

On the hillside, you will be delivered
At the foot of the cross justified
And your spirit restored
By the river that poured
From our blessed Savior's side