We put the car in drive and found ourselves meandering through the streets, searching for the lights that used to enrapture us as kids. Pleading with the streets to open up to the bright lights. Was it the test of time and a lack of lights or had the magic dissipated with our age we wondered? The lights were less, our tree is leaning, decorations cost more than our paychecks and we wrapped our gifts in newspaper, why has our age robbed us of the magic of Christmas?
Have our hearts grown too cynical? Have our weary souls closed eyes because we have seen too much? The broken pieces of this world seem so much louder, my heart requiring a gentleness I never needed before longs for the simplicity of my childhood, the joy I once encountered.
In an attempt to bring back the joy, I bought Ann Voskamp's The Greatest Gift. An advent devotional like no other. She begins with Adam and Eve, taking us through the joy of the gift of life, to the heartbreak of the first sin, to the new start with Noah and the faith of Abraham and the brokenness through it all.
I appreciate the book, because she is not demanding that I find the magic in Christmas, she gently uncovers my wounds and my hesitations and invites Jesus in.
Ruth is one of the two women mentioned in the lineage of Jesus, both not of Hebrew descent. Rahab, a prostitute, put her faith in the God of the Hebrews. She did not know the rituals she needed to follow, she had not sacrificed a lamb for her sins and she did not know what it would take to follow the Lord, but she put her life on the line for the Hebrew spies and declared the truth she had seen and taken faith in and she asked them to save her life. This choice was not one of fear for her life, it was one in faith and fear for the powerful God that she longed to know. This was Boaz's mother. The one who would be the Kinsmen Redeemer of Ruth.
Ruth married a Hebrew who had fled to her land because of famine. When her husband died, she was left with her mother in law. She told Naomi she would return with her. And she did. In faith, she like Abraham, walked away from her family to make Yahweh her God. And in her faith, married into the family line of Jesus.
"There are no brazen miracles to be seen in the entire book of Ruth. No angels appear stage left, no visions shatter the night, no heavenly hosts are overhead." - Ann Voskamp
But the storylines of these two women are miraculous because of their inexplicable faith. Faith in a miraculous God without seeing miracles. Faith in God without knowing or understanding all of the details. Faith in God without having a theology set. Faith in God with an abandon to their life and a desire to know him. Much can we learn from these women.
They came to know God not because of their theology, or knowledge, or miracles and signs and wonders, they came to God out of pure faith. And God rewarded them for this, a reward they would never know this side of heaven. How marvelous.
Christmas is an invitation, not to magic, but to majesty. I am learning the bright lights may not shine as brightly and the world will never feel as light. But when I turn my eyes away from temporary things and am filled in eternal, I will see the majesty. Christmas is an invitation to know Him. Not to better my theology of what it means for God to come to man, but to rest in the truth that God came to man and it was for the simple fact that his heart is for us.
Like Ruth and Rahab, I may not see the miracles in daily life.
But Oh Lord,
that I would have eyes to see your majesty.
I'm not asking for the magic, I'm asking for your majesty.
I'm not asking for Christmas spirit, I'm asking for the gentle joy that sits in my heart during the darkest of days.
I want You this Christmas, not the lights, or the gifts, I want You.
Come majestic Lord, come.
