Though I’ve been full of holiday cheer this season, I’ve had some trouble grasping anew for myself the miracle of Christmas. So I’ve been reading different versions of the Christmas story and cramming meaningful holiday music and movies down my own throat trying to force it to sink in. But it didn’t happen until tonight. After Christmas Eve service we came back home for pie and coffee with my grandparents, and ended up watching old home videos my Granddad has taken over the years. We put in one that had footage from Christmas a few years ago at my cousins’ house in Georgia. It made me laugh and look forward to seeing some of them this weekend, regret that I won’t see others for awhile, and miss terribly my aunt Donna. We saw some other family gatherings on the video, and then the date at the bottom of the screen read MAY 30 2005 and the picture was the same living room in Georgia, only my aunt looked about fifteen years older and the mood was different. As we sat in my living room watching the images we realized we were watching video of the last weeks of Donna's life.
I watched the scene: my aunt, in pain and in love with her Jesus, enjoying the hell out of her family. They held her and made her laugh, because this is how they said goodbye. The boys played guitar, and they all worshipped. Donna lay on the sofa, her feet swollen and her skin drawn; her eyes sunk too far into her head, and she sang with a peaceful look on her face:
My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly trust in Jesus’ Name.
When darkness seems to hide His face,
I rest on His unchanging grace.
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.
On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.
His oath, His covenant, His blood,
Support me in the whelming flood.
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my Hope and Stay.
On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.
When He shall come with trumpet sound,
Oh may I then in Him be found.
Dressed in His righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne.
On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.
And while I watched, it occurred to me that this is the miracle of Christmas: that our God sent his Son in the way that he did, to do the work that he did, in order that my aunt could die in the peace of those moments. She knew his grace - for herself and her family - she kept his worthiness always before her, and worshipped him until the end. We worship a God who humbled himself to become a child who would grow into a man that lived and worked among the poor and underprivileged of this world in order that he might be known that intimately by Donna and her family at the end of her life. He denied all that was owed to him in order to be grasped by us, in order to be a friend and a comfort and a reason beyond ourselves to carry on when life betrays us. I’m so blessed to know this God, to walk in relationship with him as my aunt did, because I see through her example how dramatically his incarnation effects our lives.
So it is with deep gratitude and reflection that I celebrate this Christmas. Because just as he came as an infant, so also will he come at the end, and in so many ways he comes today – even in my life. He dresses us in his righteousness alone, and declares us faultless that we might stand before the throne. I can’t think of anything more powerful to celebrate this Christmas.
So it is with deep gratitude and reflection that I celebrate this Christmas. Because just as he came as an infant, so also will he come at the end, and in so many ways he comes today – even in my life. He dresses us in his righteousness alone, and declares us faultless that we might stand before the throne. I can’t think of anything more powerful to celebrate this Christmas.
No comments:
Post a Comment