Matthew 1:21
It is the day after Christmas. I’m sitting in a coffee shop drinking a cortado while watching four sparrows hop around the parking lot. They are in two pairs and I’m not sure what that means other than two of them stick together and bounce about on their tiny little legs and chill as little sparrow couples. The four of them come together like they are at a neighborhood association meeting and chirp and peck and sometimes a fifth sparrow tries to join the committee, but the pair of pairs doesn’t let him and one guy is the enforcer and he will flap up and dive bomb the interloper. Now all four birds are separated around a sedan, sitting plump and stoic and I can’t see their tiny feet. I wonder if they had some internal struggle or they couldn’t make a quorum and just gave up or maybe they figured things out and voted and it’s just the right moment for some sparrow alone time. I get it. Christmas can be a little overwhelming. There’s a lot going on. Parties and presents and peppermint things are happening and it’s hard to get a moment of quiet. That’s why I’m at a coffee shop. Because things are so good I need a break from it. Maybe that’s why the sparrows are chilling. Because life is good and they just need a moment.
Christmas changes as I get older. As a 7-year-old with a lopsided bowl cut and Tuffskinz, Christmas was a mystery, full of wonder and anticipation. I didn’t have to work to make it magical. Then I got old enough to where I could buy gifts for other people and it cost me a little something. I could help decorate. I could contribute to the magic. When we became parents, we shouldered the beautiful burden of manufacturing the wonder for our children. Our kids are old enough now that they help me lug the decorations from the attic and hook lights to the shingles and spend money they earned on the people they love. Soon they will shoulder the beautiful burden and experience the lightness of its passing.
The day after Christmas is a quiet after the storm. We have celebrated for a whole month. Our bank accounts are lighter and my waistline is fuller and it’s time to move on to the next things in life. The Lord didn’t make us to celebrate like this all the time. He made us creatures of rhythms. Creatures of seasons. Creatures of day and night and rain and sun and cookies and Keto. The marvelous thing is that He made us for Himself and He loves us and as the anticipation of Christmas transitions like a sunset into the vermillion twilight of memory, I am reminded of the glorious truth that God’s love for us is always active. Always working. Yesterday as I awoke on Christmas morning the verse the Lord brought to mind wasn’t the chorus of angels, but the words of a single angel to Joseph:
“She will give birth to a Son; and you shall name Him Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”
Jesus came to save us from our sins. In the most ordinary yet miraculous event, a woman giving birth to a son, God brought about the greatest thing that has ever happened. Joseph, who must have just had so very many questions, was given the honor of naming Jesus. “And you shall name Him Jesus.” God the Father entrusted Joseph naming God the Son. How humble and kind and generous is our God! He gets all the glory, but He doesn’t grasp to get the credit. He shares His redemptive work with those He is saving.
And it is HE who saves us from our sin. It sure as heck isn’t me.
I am more powerless even than those tiny sparrows. Imagine if I went out and preached to the little quarrel of sparrows that they needed to pay off the $38 trillion-dollar US debt. They couldn’t understand me. They would scatter in fear. Maybe they would regroup across another the parking lot, form a new committee, and squabble about how demanding and uncaring I am, or debate my very existence or question my goodness. And that little committee would still have far more power to pay off that debt that we have to pay off ours. So great is our sin against a good and holy God.
This coming week is my favorite week of the year. No one expects anything. Most folks are off work. Kids are out of school. People travel. Jenny and I celebrate God’s incalculable grace and kindness on our anniversary (our 25th this year – that feels like a big one), and we get a breather before everything spins back up in January.
In the afterglow of Advent, take a moment, or maybe even grab a good friend and a good coffee or a good beer and loop several moments together. Maybe loop so many that you start with good coffee and end with good beer. Let your heart ruminate on the reality that Jesus came to save us from our sins. Really save us. Not just say He saved us, but to empower us with the Spirit and indwell us with Himself and give us the Word and the Body and breath in our lungs. In those woven together moments, imagine this: That how much He says He loves you is actually how much He loves you.
We are His people. You belong to the same Jesus who made the sparrow and who knows when one falls and you are worth far more than any sparrow. Even the ones in committee the day after Christmas.
