Christmas reflections

Merry Christmas! Cindy and Lindsey and I just spent a nice, sleepy Christmas Day opening presents, watching movies, giving backrubs, and eating hummus and carrots and Indian curry...mmmm. :) :) :) It hasn't felt so much like Christmas actually this year, because we started celebrating in November, but right now, for the first time today really, I'm sitting down to reflect a bit on Christmas thoughts...

Sometime during the years, I've gotten pretty pessimistic about people's love. I remember the first guy who told me that he liked me. I think I simply didn't respond at all...and when a second guy told me the same thing some years later, I responded with something like, "Don't say that!!" Most of the time, when people (especially guys) say complimentary things or really big things like, "I love you," it just brings out a streak of anger in me--anger because they are saying something that is so obviously not true. I don't trust them.

This year, we had so many students and other people come to Christmas worship services for the first time...SO many people that God brought in and who were touched by the Christmas message. It was such a blessing to see the people! I wonder, as I reflect on those people, if they have heard "God loves you" before and they've said inside themselves, "Don't say that! It's not true!" Especially during Christmas Eve worship, as I was reading the English Gospel lesson and trying to convey joy and love to the people, I was seeing on people's faces some of the inner struggle...maybe thinking to themselves, "This is a holy place...and they say that God is here...but He couldn't possibly be here to be close to me! What does this Christmas thing really have to do with me anyway?!"

It's really hard to trust. Since Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we've been taught to be distrustful of strangers, be careful and guard against emotional and physical hurts and pains, etc. etc. Bad things and pain and lies are the norm, maybe...love is not so common.

Today, as I was opening some Christmas presents from my family, I opened a book full of blessings/prayers to bless people with...words from the Bible or words about God to remind people's spirits that they are loved and chosen and known by their Father. I opened the book to the first blessing and began to read it to Cindy and Lindsey out loud, but didn't make it through the page before starting to cry. The basic message of the words on the page: "I love you." Like I said before, maybe usually that line would create a sense of anger inside of me... But this "I love you" was coming from my family, from my God...from a place where I could trust. It feels often like in the everyday world, a person is always fighting lies about who they are or who he or she should be, but for just a moment even, I could stop and hear and really believe a message of love that was not manipulative or fake, but trustworthy:..."I made you. I know you. And I love you."

And it makes me think again about the Christmas word Emmanuel--God with us. About how amazing it is that God came down in human form, to show us that He is a crazy, loving, trustworthy God, who never breaks His promises and who will go to the most ridiculous, painful ends to accomplish salvation for His children. I'm reminded again of the struggle on people's faces during Christmas Eve worship, and I find myself praying that they caught enough of the message to know that the whole, "God loves you" thing isn't just a fake...that it is backed up by the presence of the Baby in the manger...that Christmas is so wonderful because it's God becoming flesh...proving once and for all how far He would go to rescue people.

I can't even type how many amazing stories we have from this past week, and how many non-Christians were led to come to the church services and be a part of the Christmas celebration...I could fill a whole page, definitely! At one point, I was sitting between two non-Christians, trying to keep track of people ahead of me and behind me...during Sunday worship's communion, we had almost an entire church front filled with people simply coming up to be blessed, because they weren't Christians yet and so they couldn't take communion...Sensei yesterday said, "This year has been different because there have been so many people that I don't know in church!" God just keeps bringing people in from all over!

It's amazing to see Him work...but most amazing I think, no matter how many years I've celebrated Christmas, is the simple message, "Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord..." I'm loved by a God I can trust; a God who became just like me in order to save me. A God who knows, who lives, who sees, and who is, indeed, mighty...