Joyful Ruins

Our world is often painted in black and white. You are either soft or hard, strong or weak, loving or truthful, forgiving or demanding, and so on. Life, too, is either light or dark, good or bad, hopeful or mournful.

I want to invite you into a world of color, one in which a baby AND a King came into the world, illustrating that contradictions live together when we follow Him, that contradictions meet in Jesus Christ.

Jesus’ birth is a walking contradiction. The Son of God came into the world naturally, by physical birth, and supernaturally, conceived by the Holy Spirit. He came into the world weak and vulnerable yet He was full of strength. Just a baby, depending on His mother AND the Savior changing the history of the human race.

The announcement of His birth, too, was filled with contradictions. Quiet and loud, as it happened without great fanfare, yet a chorus of angels sang Him glory and announced the great news to Shepherds in a quiet field. Clear and obscured. A bright start lead Wise men to baby Jesus while visions and obscurity protected Jesus birth from wide knowledge, and especially from a tyrant king.

Christ’s life, not just birth, contradicts so many of our ways of living and thinking. He welcomed sinners and corrected the religious. He claimed to be the Messiah while claiming to be a servant. He was Son of God and Son of Man. He was meek AND strong, gentle and tough. He washed feet and cleared temples. He died on a cross and rose back to life.

The Christmas story and Christ’s life remind us to put down black and white thinking. Instead, we learn, from Him, to lean into two opposite concepts, we learn they can meet together, move towards one another.

That means for us that we can both know our great worth AND serve others out of Christ’s love. It means we may have one political leaning AND we recognize that other political leanings hold value too. It means that we may be mourning AND we may also feel joy. It may look like singing Christmas carols AND quiet times alone at home. The list is endless and the Christ is continuously surprising.

So, I encourage you to ponder how Christ’s birth shatters so many of our earthly ideas and invites us into a life of mingled contradictions.