weekly gratitude | christmas edition

thank you for a whole bunch of happy feet on christmas eve

This one is going to be sweet and to the point - 

I am just incredibly, remarkably, overwhelmingly, indescribably and unwaveringly grateful for Christmas. And what it truly means. 

As the day moved from early afternoon in the kitchen (to the sounds White Christmas and Jared & Shamoo busily cleaning the apartment in preparation for everyone's arrival) to the hustle and din of a houseful of people, I would stop every few minutes to just soak it all in. 

This. 

All of this made possible because a long, long time ago, a young woman named Mary gave birth to a sweet baby boy. All this because the bravery of a faithful woman brought forth the life that was the promise of our salvation. Because He was born, because He lived and died and rose again - that is why I found myself, millenniums later, in a probably-too-small-apartment with a handful-and-a-half of some of the most important people in my life, drinking champagne, eating too many Scotch eggs, and playing probably the most irreverent game of Cards Against Humanity known to man.

Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you for coming to the world that so desperately needed you and igniting the light so that we might shine for all these thousands of years after you first came down. 

And thank you Mary, for raising this son for us.

I wonder sometimes, was she sad at all that night? Did she look at this beautiful new son in her arms and fear for Him? Cry, knowing why He came and what He would have to do?

Or did she simply smile at His sweet little baby face, knowing He was hers?

I like remembering that on this night, Jesus was just a baby. A tiny newborn, beginning just as any of us did. While He never stopped being all God, He was all human. He was born the same as every man before and after him, arriving no more extravagantly than the humblest among us (though yes, that whole immaculate conception thing is pretty impressive, I grant you that).

You know that song "Little Drummer Boy"? My favorite part is the image of that little boy meeting Jesus there in the manger - not looking at this tiny new person as the incarnate deity but just as another little boy, and doing the only thing he could think of to make him smile.

He wasn't trying to impress a King. He wasn't trying to win some eternal favor with the Creator of the Universe. 

He just made the baby smile by doing what he would do for anyone - played his little heart out because that's what he loved and that's just what he did!

What would it look like if we all thought of Jesus that way? What if we stopped trying to impress Him and "win him over" or earn some sort of grace points with Him because He's God, and just did what we were born to do and make Him smile?

It might be something worth thinking about.

And so with that, another year of Weekly Gratitude comes to a close. Another year of counting my blessings and trying my darndest to acknowledge the One who makes it all possible. 

 Thank You.