Everyday Educator - The Mystery of Christmas
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Welcome friends to this episode
00:00:05.880 | of the "Everyday Educator" podcast.
00:00:08.760 | I'm your host, Lisa Bailey,
00:00:10.440 | and I'm excited to spend some time with you today
00:00:13.240 | as we encourage one another, learn together,
00:00:16.960 | and ponder the delights and challenges
00:00:20.160 | that make homeschooling the adventure of a lifetime.
00:00:23.760 | Whether you're just considering
00:00:25.920 | this homeschooling possibility
00:00:28.560 | or deep into the daily delight of family learning,
00:00:32.680 | I believe you'll enjoy thinking along with us.
00:00:36.320 | But don't forget,
00:00:37.960 | although this online community is awesome,
00:00:41.560 | you'll find even closer support in a local CC community.
00:00:46.560 | So go to classicalconversations.com
00:00:51.200 | and find a community near you today.
00:00:56.320 | Well, listeners, I'm super excited to welcome you
00:00:59.720 | to this Advent podcast,
00:01:02.600 | and we are drawing ever closer to Christmas,
00:01:06.160 | and the excitement at our house is palpable,
00:01:09.080 | and I bet it is at your house as well.
00:01:12.400 | We are going to talk today about some questions
00:01:16.560 | and some thoughts and some wonderings
00:01:20.000 | that you might want to share with your own family.
00:01:22.520 | If you're looking for some great conversation starters
00:01:27.400 | about Christmas and about the spirit of Christmas,
00:01:31.340 | about the whole Advent season,
00:01:33.440 | you might want to use some of this
00:01:35.640 | to start a conversation with your family
00:01:38.240 | about the mystery and the wonder of Christmas.
00:01:42.120 | I have a guest today,
00:01:44.740 | and in the spirit of full disclosure,
00:01:47.760 | I'm gonna tell you, my guest is my husband, David.
00:01:52.400 | He's a pastor,
00:01:53.840 | and he is one of the best people I know
00:01:56.960 | at finding the hidden riches in scripture,
00:02:00.880 | especially in familiar stories
00:02:04.600 | that many of us swallow whole without chewing anymore.
00:02:09.600 | And after years of reading and hearing these stories,
00:02:15.560 | we just might be missing something significant.
00:02:19.280 | When something is super familiar,
00:02:21.680 | I don't know if it's true for you,
00:02:23.160 | but this is how it works for me.
00:02:24.640 | When something is super familiar,
00:02:27.480 | I take it in sometimes without letting it touch me
00:02:32.280 | or change me.
00:02:34.200 | Certainly, none of us want to do that
00:02:37.360 | with the Christmas story.
00:02:40.000 | David, thanks for being with me on the podcast today.
00:02:44.000 | - It's my pleasure.
00:02:45.680 | Glad to be able to be here with you.
00:02:47.480 | - He watches or listens to me do this every week,
00:02:51.160 | and I think he wants in on it,
00:02:53.680 | and I want him in on it as often
00:02:56.400 | as he'll come and be with us.
00:02:58.680 | All right, let's talk about Christmas.
00:03:00.600 | A lot of times, I hear this phrase bandied about,
00:03:04.400 | and so do you probably.
00:03:06.000 | Christmas is really for the children.
00:03:08.200 | Christmas is for the children.
00:03:10.520 | But David, why is that not quite right?
00:03:13.200 | - It's funny that you and I are on the same page here,
00:03:18.160 | particularly with the idea that Christmas is for children,
00:03:22.080 | and it is for children,
00:03:23.400 | but it's not just for children.
00:03:25.800 | - Good point.
00:03:26.640 | - Growing up,
00:03:29.560 | I was always kind of baffled by Christmas
00:03:34.080 | because people got so much excitement about Christmas,
00:03:38.000 | and I never caught that excitement myself.
00:03:43.000 | - Like friends in the neighborhood or at school
00:03:46.520 | or at church or stuff like that?
00:03:48.200 | People like that?
00:03:50.160 | - Yeah, yeah, just the neighbors
00:03:52.440 | and just the whole culture seemed to be
00:03:55.880 | so excited about Christmas,
00:04:00.200 | and I always felt like I was missing something.
00:04:05.200 | - Okay, like somebody else knew a secret
00:04:08.440 | you didn't quite know the whole truth of?
00:04:12.320 | - Well,
00:04:13.160 | people were into it in ways that I just didn't understand.
00:04:18.120 | - Gotcha, yes, yes.
00:04:20.280 | So they were excited about this or that,
00:04:22.560 | and either you weren't excited
00:04:24.680 | or your family didn't participate in the excitement that way
00:04:27.600 | or you just didn't totally get it.
00:04:30.400 | - Yeah, and the family I grew up in,
00:04:32.840 | we celebrated Christmas, of course.
00:04:34.400 | - Oh, yeah.
00:04:35.240 | - It didn't seem like a magical, special time of year.
00:04:40.240 | It just felt like, yeah, this is just what we do.
00:04:44.560 | We get with family, we exchange gifts,
00:04:47.320 | and we do decorating leading up to the holiday
00:04:52.320 | and maybe some special cooking,
00:04:57.600 | but it seemed to me to be missing some crucial element
00:05:08.040 | that I just, and I've actually, as an adult,
00:05:10.760 | tried to capture, even as a pastor,
00:05:15.760 | trying to talk myself into being excited
00:05:22.360 | about the Christmas season.
00:05:25.040 | - Right, right.
00:05:26.280 | I know that when we first got married,
00:05:27.880 | we had different expectations about Christmas,
00:05:32.560 | and I've come to understand
00:05:34.600 | that it is because of our different experiences
00:05:39.600 | of Christmas as children and in our families.
00:05:44.640 | - Yeah, that is true.
00:05:46.720 | We had different experiences growing up,
00:05:49.680 | but we've been married a whole lot longer
00:05:53.520 | than we were children in our families.
00:05:54.760 | - Right, exactly, that's what I was thinking, too.
00:05:57.440 | - And so I've tried to figure out what,
00:06:04.200 | well, in the words of Charlie Brown,
00:06:06.400 | what Christmas is all about.
00:06:08.080 | - (laughs) Yep.
00:06:09.720 | - And, of course, Linus points Charlie Brown
00:06:14.720 | to the Christmas story from Luke chapter two.
00:06:18.280 | - Right.
00:06:19.320 | - But that is certainly part of it,
00:06:22.880 | but that is just the tip of the iceberg.
00:06:25.280 | - Ooh.
00:06:26.120 | - And so it's easy for children to get excited
00:06:30.800 | about beautiful Christmas trees
00:06:35.800 | and special Christmas parties and meals
00:06:38.520 | and Christmas presents and Christmas events
00:06:43.520 | like Christmas pageants and concerts.
00:06:47.800 | - Yes.
00:06:48.800 | - And so, but that only goes so far.
00:06:53.800 | I mean, that seems like it's excitement
00:06:58.880 | that's just generated on the human level.
00:07:03.840 | - Well, and there's lots of external stimulation
00:07:08.320 | for that kind of excitement.
00:07:09.640 | I mean, there are bright lights and twinkling lights,
00:07:12.440 | and there is loud Christmas music everywhere you go.
00:07:16.320 | - Yeah.
00:07:17.160 | - And there are big Christmas trees
00:07:18.800 | and big lighted neighborhood installations.
00:07:23.400 | You can hardly miss it.
00:07:24.800 | - Inflatables.
00:07:25.640 | - Yes, oh my word.
00:07:26.880 | There's lots of external stimulation
00:07:29.640 | and everywhere you turn, it's all about Christmas
00:07:33.680 | all the time, the trappings of Christmas,
00:07:36.960 | the sights and the sounds and the lights and the songs.
00:07:41.040 | - Yeah, in some way, some of those trappings
00:07:43.000 | can obscure what's really going on.
00:07:47.000 | - Yeah.
00:07:48.440 | - I always find New Year's Eve
00:07:51.040 | to be completely generated out of whole cloth,
00:07:56.040 | all the excitement about New Year's Eve,
00:07:59.400 | 'cause like we count down and then it's gonna be New Year
00:08:02.440 | and we're so excited.
00:08:03.280 | It's like, yeah, but we didn't, I mean,
00:08:05.800 | we know it's coming and there's no real surprise there.
00:08:08.880 | - Yeah.
00:08:09.720 | - And there's no real wonder of changing the number
00:08:12.520 | on your calendar.
00:08:14.240 | And so I've always felt like that was just kind of
00:08:17.080 | ginned up excitement about something that's not real.
00:08:20.920 | - Yeah.
00:08:21.760 | - And I don't want to feel the same way about Christmas,
00:08:24.640 | that it's just something that's ginned up that's not real.
00:08:28.560 | - Yeah.
00:08:29.400 | - And there needs to be more substance to it.
00:08:32.040 | And that's what, that's kind of been my quest
00:08:36.160 | as an adult trying to understand Christmas
00:08:41.160 | on more than just the intellectual level.
00:08:46.000 | - Yeah, I will admit, freely admit
00:08:49.080 | that my favorite Christmas special growing up
00:08:51.640 | and even and to adulthood was Charlie Brown Christmas.
00:08:55.160 | And when you were talking, I kept thinking,
00:08:57.880 | I could hear Lucy's voice in my ear.
00:09:00.640 | You know, Christmas is run by a big Eastern syndicate,
00:09:04.240 | Charlie Brown.
00:09:05.480 | And so I see what you're saying.
00:09:07.240 | It's a lot of trappings and a lot of stuff
00:09:09.760 | and a lot of commercialization and a lot of taking over
00:09:14.760 | of the Christian message.
00:09:18.320 | But then you do have Linus
00:09:20.360 | and I remember memorizing Luke two from hearing Linus.
00:09:25.360 | - Right.
00:09:27.240 | - All that, all those years ago from hearing that.
00:09:30.720 | And that does bring the wonder back.
00:09:33.520 | So I hear what you're saying.
00:09:35.040 | I bet all of us as parents feel that pain.
00:09:40.040 | - Well, I think that Christmas,
00:09:42.200 | we said a lot of people think it's just for the children
00:09:45.120 | and in the same way that doing chores
00:09:49.720 | is just for the children.
00:09:51.040 | Well, actually do chores to keep your home
00:09:55.560 | functioning and clean.
00:09:57.360 | And so you don't get your seven-year-old to sweep the floor
00:10:01.220 | because you think it's gonna be extra clean
00:10:03.040 | when the seven-year-old's through sweeping.
00:10:04.960 | You just get them to go through the motions,
00:10:07.440 | but you're teaching them something that's more important.
00:10:11.600 | It's a life skill they need to know how to do.
00:10:15.760 | And so you start with the stuff that they can understand
00:10:20.760 | and realizing that there's something
00:10:24.040 | more important underneath that.
00:10:25.640 | And same thing with Christmas.
00:10:27.440 | We have Christmas trees and Christmas presents
00:10:30.480 | and songs and festivities and lights on the street
00:10:34.920 | and all that, and that's fun.
00:10:36.480 | I think that's good.
00:10:39.040 | But that needs to lead us to something
00:10:43.960 | that's deeper than just a lot of outward glitz
00:10:48.960 | and excitement.
00:10:52.200 | There's nothing wrong with that
00:10:53.920 | unless the glitz obscures what is really
00:10:58.920 | the heart of Christmas.
00:11:02.480 | - Yeah, yeah.
00:11:03.600 | So how can we, as parents,
00:11:08.760 | as citizens of heaven, as Christians, as believers,
00:11:13.760 | as seeking people,
00:11:17.920 | how can we make the Christmas story,
00:11:22.720 | the Luke 2 Christmas story,
00:11:24.560 | and all the things that led up
00:11:27.080 | to the Luke 2 Christmas story,
00:11:29.560 | how can we make that fresh again?
00:11:31.640 | What is there that we might still have to discover?
00:11:37.880 | - I think you said it well.
00:11:39.280 | We're so familiar with these stories.
00:11:42.400 | It's Luke 2 and Matthew 1 and 2
00:11:47.200 | where we find the heart of the Christmas story.
00:11:50.400 | And we're so over-familiar
00:11:56.320 | with the Bible passages that we, as you say,
00:12:01.320 | chew it up or we swallow it without tasting it as it were.
00:12:06.160 | And we're so used to these stories
00:12:08.520 | that we don't ponder the meaning of them.
00:12:13.520 | And if we can really dig into the scripture
00:12:18.600 | and try to understand more of the context
00:12:21.920 | in which Matthew and Luke were recording these stories,
00:12:27.880 | I think that we're gonna find way more depth
00:12:32.840 | than we ever realized was there.
00:12:36.720 | - All right, this is cool.
00:12:37.960 | This is where I was going.
00:12:39.560 | This is what we want.
00:12:40.640 | As parents, we want some talking points.
00:12:43.920 | We want some ideas.
00:12:45.720 | I know that you have been thinking recently
00:12:48.960 | about how the Christmas story has mystery
00:12:52.440 | and wonder about it.
00:12:55.200 | Talk to us about that.
00:12:57.400 | What kinds of things should we re-examine
00:13:02.160 | or what kinds of questions should we be asking our children
00:13:05.920 | or pointing them to
00:13:07.800 | so that we can have some real good conversations
00:13:11.680 | that bring us back to the wonder that is Christmas?
00:13:15.880 | - Yeah, I think just pondering what the actual stories say,
00:13:19.840 | even on the surface level, when we ponder what's there,
00:13:24.840 | and when I say the surface,
00:13:28.480 | what I mean is without doing a lot of biblical background
00:13:32.360 | study and cross-references to Old Testament passages.
00:13:34.600 | - Right, right, right.
00:13:35.440 | So don't have to study it.
00:13:37.200 | - Right, but there's a lot of value in that.
00:13:41.000 | But even if you don't wanna go to that trouble,
00:13:42.680 | just imagine what it must have been like for,
00:13:47.680 | in Matthew, Joseph is betrothed to Mary
00:13:54.440 | and turns out she's pregnant.
00:13:57.840 | Whoa, wait, what?
00:13:59.840 | Now, of course, you need to be age-appropriate
00:14:01.960 | how you talk about this stuff with children,
00:14:03.760 | but that's part of the Christmas story.
00:14:06.040 | You have an unwed woman who's pregnant
00:14:10.160 | and her fiance wants to be kind to her,
00:14:15.160 | but knows the noble thing to do
00:14:19.000 | is to quietly call off this wedding.
00:14:23.560 | And how must Mary have felt?
00:14:28.360 | Did she try to tell Joseph what was going on?
00:14:32.560 | Probably she tried to, but,
00:14:38.080 | or maybe she didn't because it was revealed to Joseph
00:14:41.360 | in a dream that his soon-to-be wife
00:14:46.360 | was pregnant with a child by means of the Holy Spirit.
00:14:52.920 | And the angel tells Joseph in the dream
00:14:56.920 | that he's to name this child Jesus.
00:15:00.640 | And so one thing we can do with our children
00:15:03.080 | is read the stories and how do you think Joseph felt?
00:15:06.240 | I mean, he was surprised.
00:15:07.640 | And one thing to think about is that according to Luke,
00:15:14.360 | Mary, for the first three months of her pregnancy,
00:15:22.480 | she was gone to visit her cousin Elizabeth,
00:15:27.480 | the old woman who was suddenly pregnant for the first time.
00:15:33.040 | And so Mary's been out of town for three months
00:15:36.000 | and comes back to Nazareth and, "Oh, she's pregnant, huh."
00:15:41.000 | And so we can just think about how these stories
00:15:47.080 | must have really felt in real time.
00:15:50.000 | - Yeah, I was reading this story
00:15:51.920 | with a friend of mine recently,
00:15:54.240 | and her observation was there's a lot that's left out.
00:15:58.920 | There are a lot of details that are left out
00:16:02.800 | that you just think, I guess,
00:16:05.320 | that that was not the important part of the story,
00:16:08.960 | but it bears some thinking about.
00:16:11.840 | I mean, here is this young pregnant woman
00:16:17.040 | who is going to ride a donkey a long way to pay taxes.
00:16:22.040 | So like, what was that conversation about?
00:16:27.640 | I mean, Mary did it, she did it.
00:16:29.600 | She went with Joseph,
00:16:30.800 | but you know they must have had some conversations about,
00:16:34.200 | now you want me to do what?
00:16:36.000 | Now, come again, now where are we gonna stay?
00:16:38.760 | Do we have a reservation?
00:16:40.720 | You know, all of those details,
00:16:42.880 | you can talk to your children about that.
00:16:45.040 | When you chew on some of those specifics
00:16:49.240 | that they can relate to,
00:16:50.840 | they can relate to a long trip.
00:16:52.840 | This was a long trip, not in a car to grandma's house.
00:16:56.080 | This was a long trip over desert places,
00:17:00.000 | on a donkey, going with hordes of other people
00:17:06.760 | to this little town that is not used to taking it.
00:17:10.000 | This is not Orlando with the Disney hotels.
00:17:13.000 | This is a tiny place that's not used
00:17:16.280 | to taking in a lot of people.
00:17:18.080 | And so if you just look at those kinds of details,
00:17:22.120 | it helps humanize the story somehow.
00:17:25.040 | - It really does.
00:17:27.680 | And we can relate to those things much better
00:17:32.200 | when we really take a minute and think about them.
00:17:34.520 | And because the stories are so familiar,
00:17:36.520 | we just kind of say, well, yeah,
00:17:37.960 | you know, they went from Nazareth to Bethlehem.
00:17:40.200 | We all know that, but to imagine what it was like
00:17:43.600 | brings out a lot of depth to the story.
00:17:46.760 | But even beyond that,
00:17:48.920 | this is a bizarre story.
00:17:55.520 | Here's a woman who's not married,
00:17:57.640 | who's pregnant and hasn't ever been with a man.
00:18:00.600 | And her betrothed, her fiance,
00:18:06.680 | is committed, because of communication
00:18:10.800 | from an angel in a dream,
00:18:12.800 | he's committed to taking care of this woman
00:18:16.640 | who society said, yeah, just kind of push her aside.
00:18:21.640 | So that's bizarre.
00:18:25.160 | And so then they have to travel, like you said,
00:18:28.240 | about 80 miles to Bethlehem from Nazareth.
00:18:32.200 | And there's nowhere to stay.
00:18:35.120 | When they get there, the baby's born.
00:18:37.680 | Okay, you know, these things happen.
00:18:40.680 | But then that night, there are these strangers
00:18:43.800 | that come up and say, oh, we heard that you had a baby.
00:18:46.400 | And he's, Christ the Lord, really?
00:18:51.400 | - I mean, if I was that young mom,
00:18:53.800 | I would be like, who are you?
00:18:56.360 | What are you doing here?
00:18:57.720 | And how do you know that I just had a baby?
00:19:00.400 | I did not send out birth announcements.
00:19:03.360 | I don't know how, and how do you know
00:19:06.000 | this is Christ the Lord?
00:19:07.320 | - Well, they show up, which is weird enough,
00:19:10.320 | as in our culture, they're really awkward.
00:19:14.160 | But then they tell this weird story.
00:19:16.040 | Yeah, angels appeared to us out in the pasture,
00:19:19.600 | and the glory of the Lord shone round about us,
00:19:22.400 | and we were so afraid.
00:19:23.600 | - But you know, Mary and Joseph,
00:19:24.720 | I mean, to us, that would be super weird.
00:19:26.560 | Like, if angels appear in the backyard,
00:19:28.480 | I'm gonna be a little taken aback.
00:19:30.480 | But Mary and Joseph, I mean,
00:19:32.000 | they both had been visited by angels.
00:19:34.560 | So when these guys tell 'em that angels appeared to 'em,
00:19:37.320 | they're probably, oh, cool, okay, happened to us.
00:19:39.320 | - Well, the pieces of the puzzle
00:19:40.840 | are starting to fit together.
00:19:42.680 | And the weird stories keep happening,
00:19:45.160 | because then they go to dedicate Jesus at the temple,
00:19:50.160 | and again, in Luke chapter two,
00:19:52.080 | and they get a lot of attention from a guy named Simeon,
00:19:56.440 | who says, oh, the Lord said that I wouldn't die
00:20:00.600 | before I saw the Christ, and here he is.
00:20:02.520 | And Mary's thinking, okay, well, in fact,
00:20:04.920 | Luke tells us that she stored up
00:20:06.480 | all these things in her heart.
00:20:07.480 | But these are just strange events.
00:20:11.680 | Then Anna comes up and corroborates Simeon's story.
00:20:16.040 | And then they, a few months later,
00:20:21.960 | when they're in a house in Nazareth,
00:20:24.600 | then these magi, these astrologers
00:20:29.600 | from the area of Persia show up,
00:20:33.800 | and they're like, and they give expensive gifts?
00:20:37.040 | Well, so these are just, these are bizarre stories,
00:20:41.960 | and we think about them happening.
00:20:46.400 | We realize that this is, these are weird, weird stories,
00:20:51.800 | but none of that is as powerful
00:20:56.600 | as the story of the incarnation itself.
00:21:02.720 | - Yeah, yeah, it actually makes sense
00:21:06.320 | for the story to be unusual and unexpected
00:21:10.680 | because the meaning of what happened is so unusual,
00:21:15.680 | although it should have been expected.
00:21:18.640 | There are lots of prophecies about it.
00:21:20.440 | I mean, I agree, it totally did not look like
00:21:23.000 | what anybody was expecting to happen.
00:21:25.760 | - Well, they were looking for a Messiah,
00:21:28.200 | and when they found out,
00:21:30.080 | when people said this was Messiah, that was great.
00:21:34.360 | But this is not what even the Jews
00:21:39.360 | of the first century expected from a Messiah.
00:21:42.240 | - Right, they were not looking for a baby born in a barn.
00:21:45.280 | - Yeah, and even if they were looking for a newborn king,
00:21:48.480 | the king was gonna grow up and,
00:21:50.920 | through physical human strength, throw off the oppressors,
00:21:58.360 | and so the life that he lived,
00:21:59.880 | I mean, so much of this is unexpected,
00:22:01.800 | but when we just ponder the whole idea
00:22:03.360 | that God could be born,
00:22:07.680 | he's the creator of the world,
00:22:10.400 | and Matthew makes the point
00:22:15.520 | through his literary references
00:22:19.000 | that Jesus is the new Jerusalem.
00:22:23.720 | He is the light shining.
00:22:25.920 | He is heaven on earth.
00:22:29.280 | And it's another iteration of God
00:22:35.640 | working to bring heaven on earth.
00:22:41.040 | He started in the Garden of Eden, and that didn't work out.
00:22:44.160 | Then he finally called Abraham,
00:22:49.160 | and Abraham did okay,
00:22:53.640 | but he had his own flaws.
00:22:57.320 | But heaven on earth was reattempted
00:22:59.520 | through the tabernacle in the wilderness,
00:23:02.680 | and so this portal, as it were,
00:23:05.040 | the portable place where God has his special presence,
00:23:13.520 | and that was something that the Jews carried with them
00:23:18.360 | and then created a temple to house God's presence,
00:23:23.160 | but all of that only went so far,
00:23:26.520 | and now we have in a baby, in a person,
00:23:30.640 | here is God's presence among us in a special way,
00:23:35.600 | and this is supernatural.
00:23:37.480 | This is very mystical stuff,
00:23:41.520 | and so when we only try to understand stuff
00:23:45.600 | on the scientific level,
00:23:47.760 | it's like, oh, what was the star of Bethlehem?
00:23:49.600 | Well, we had these planets in conjunction
00:23:51.440 | and blah, blah, blah.
00:23:52.280 | Okay, that's fine,
00:23:53.200 | but when we really ponder
00:23:59.960 | what it means to have God coming to earth
00:24:05.480 | as a human, as a defenseless child,
00:24:12.040 | that just blows our minds,
00:24:15.400 | and I think we just need to ponder that.
00:24:18.560 | - Right, what does that signify?
00:24:21.880 | That God came to us as a baby,
00:24:26.120 | and how, you know, one thing that you said resonated with me,
00:24:29.520 | Jesus came to be the light of the world,
00:24:34.520 | so how was this baby a light of the world?
00:24:40.520 | A light to the world?
00:24:42.720 | Those are questions to talk about with your family.
00:24:49.320 | How did it usher in a new era?
00:24:55.480 | How did it forge a new relationship
00:25:03.880 | between God and His people?
00:25:07.320 | How was it a light, and what does light do,
00:25:10.640 | and how did Jesus do the work of light?
00:25:16.440 | How did He shine in the darkness?
00:25:20.200 | How did He illuminate things,
00:25:22.800 | and how did that all start with the baby?
00:25:25.160 | - Yeah, these are all questions
00:25:27.960 | that we need to take some time and ponder,
00:25:30.720 | just think about what it means for Jesus to be the light,
00:25:36.840 | and it's not just a light for the Jews,
00:25:39.520 | but a light to the nations, to the world,
00:25:44.160 | and you go back to Genesis 1,
00:25:47.520 | where the first thing God said was, "Let there be light,"
00:25:50.680 | and light dispels darkness,
00:25:56.640 | but Jesus coming as a baby
00:26:04.640 | is God on a very intimate level.
00:26:09.640 | What is more intimate than a mother and a baby?
00:26:16.400 | I mean, that is closeness like no other close relationship.
00:26:21.400 | There's a marriage relationship,
00:26:24.160 | but that's still different from a mother and a child,
00:26:27.720 | and there's a lot of tenderness there,
00:26:32.760 | and that's God put Himself, His Son,
00:26:36.360 | in a position to be the recipient
00:26:40.280 | of human love and tenderness,
00:26:43.760 | and that's how intimate God wants to be with us.
00:26:50.240 | - Yeah, He wants that relationship with us,
00:26:57.520 | and it's really cool when you look at all the parts
00:27:01.000 | of the Christmas story,
00:27:03.080 | you see God initiating
00:27:08.080 | a new kind of relationship with people.
00:27:12.760 | You had the shepherds who are interacting with God
00:27:17.400 | in a whole new way.
00:27:18.240 | They never saw angels appear before,
00:27:21.200 | and they have the good news first, okay?
00:27:28.160 | So, that's a way that God interacted with those shepherds.
00:27:33.160 | - Yeah, that's a really good point
00:27:34.080 | because God revealed this to the people
00:27:38.520 | on the margins of society.
00:27:39.960 | He didn't let the rich and powerful,
00:27:42.160 | important people get the word first.
00:27:47.800 | In fact, they were the ones who rejected the word,
00:27:52.040 | and we see that in Matthew.
00:27:54.760 | King Herod and all the power brokers in Jerusalem
00:27:57.520 | did not like the idea of this newborn king,
00:28:01.960 | and Herod tried to have him murdered.
00:28:04.520 | - So, God, He initiated a relationship
00:28:09.840 | through the shepherds.
00:28:10.840 | He initiated, obviously, with Mary and Joseph.
00:28:15.840 | When the angel came to them,
00:28:20.240 | He was initiating a relationship of a call on them
00:28:24.920 | to be part of this story in a new way.
00:28:29.200 | - Yeah, and that's kind of Jesus's mission.
00:28:30.920 | I mean, He was reaching out to people
00:28:33.120 | on the edges of society all the way through,
00:28:36.760 | and God kind of turns upside down
00:28:41.760 | common human sense.
00:28:45.320 | The rich and powerful are the people
00:28:46.960 | that you need to pay attention to,
00:28:51.160 | and they're the ones that you need
00:28:52.640 | to give the information to.
00:28:55.320 | They're the ones that, humanly, you want to focus on,
00:29:00.320 | but God's story is that He is reaching out
00:29:06.800 | to the outcast, and in some ways,
00:29:11.800 | in our culture, living in the United States,
00:29:16.680 | we don't really, a lot of us don't know
00:29:21.480 | what it is to be on the outside, to be outcast,
00:29:26.360 | and to realize that the people who first heard the gospel
00:29:31.040 | were people unlike us.
00:29:34.200 | - Right, right.
00:29:36.040 | - Who were desperate for their next meal,
00:29:39.360 | or who were oppressed by their government,
00:29:43.360 | or who had been sold into slavery.
00:29:46.840 | - Yeah, yeah.
00:29:48.560 | - And we don't identify with that,
00:29:50.760 | but those are the people that Jesus ministered to,
00:29:54.200 | and His humble beginning was, it set the tone for,
00:29:59.200 | 'cause He could say, "I know what it's like to be poor.
00:30:03.400 | - Yeah, yeah.
00:30:04.960 | - I know what it's like not to have a home."
00:30:07.320 | - And He is initiating relationships with all of those.
00:30:13.280 | People.
00:30:14.120 | - Yeah.
00:30:14.960 | - And the very birth of Jesus is the initiation
00:30:19.120 | of a new relationship that God is eager to have
00:30:23.600 | with those who will believe on His Son.
00:30:27.440 | And so, one really cool way to bring maybe some fresh eyes
00:30:32.440 | back to the Christmas story is to ask your family,
00:30:38.240 | what kind of relationship is the Lord initiating
00:30:43.240 | with you this season?
00:30:46.480 | How can you forge a new relationship with Jesus
00:30:52.160 | as you look more deeply into the Christmas story
00:30:55.480 | than perhaps you have done before?
00:30:57.700 | - Well, and I think that we can get our children
00:31:05.640 | to wonder what, as parents and grandparents,
00:31:09.280 | we know what it's like to have a little child love you.
00:31:12.440 | And imagine little Jesus loving His mom,
00:31:16.200 | loving His stepdad, His adopted dad,
00:31:20.080 | loving His brothers and sisters that came along.
00:31:23.560 | And to be the recipient of such pure love,
00:31:28.560 | and of course, other children,
00:31:32.880 | their pure love is not so pure after a while.
00:31:35.440 | - Right.
00:31:36.280 | - But Jesus' love for us is always pure.
00:31:39.240 | And if we just ponder how profoundly
00:31:44.240 | that can change us to be loved.
00:31:47.920 | I'm bad at receiving love.
00:31:50.080 | And it takes some stillness,
00:31:53.240 | it takes some time just to let it soak in.
00:31:56.500 | Even love expressed by another person,
00:32:03.040 | we need to ponder that and receive love from other people,
00:32:08.040 | but we also need to receive love from the Lord.
00:32:11.080 | And this is what Christmas is all about.
00:32:15.040 | It's about God's love.
00:32:16.780 | - Yeah.
00:32:17.620 | - And we need to take some time as adults
00:32:19.680 | to revel in that, to soak it in.
00:32:25.640 | - Yeah, that's really good.
00:32:27.440 | I can remember as a youth at my church growing up,
00:32:33.080 | I was part of a Christmas cantata
00:32:36.400 | with the adult choir and the youth choir
00:32:38.240 | and maybe the children's choir too.
00:32:39.620 | And it was called "Love Came Down at Christmas."
00:32:42.720 | And as you were talking,
00:32:44.520 | it reminded me of that musical and that is true.
00:32:48.400 | Love came down at Christmas in the form of this baby.
00:32:53.400 | And I think it's well worth us pondering
00:32:57.620 | what kind of love was that?
00:33:01.360 | Explore that with your family, with your children.
00:33:04.480 | In what way was God pronouncing and sharing love with us?
00:33:09.480 | And then I think it's worth exploring
00:33:14.440 | after we sit with that for a while
00:33:17.080 | and feel the love of the Lord,
00:33:20.180 | how will we reflect that love to other people?
00:33:24.200 | What could your family do to bring love,
00:33:28.160 | to spread love abroad at Christmas?
00:33:31.840 | What could your response to the Christmas story be
00:33:36.840 | if you understood it on a deeper level this year?
00:33:41.440 | - And I think we need to realize
00:33:42.560 | that we never fully comprehend it.
00:33:45.060 | And if you don't grasp Christmas
00:33:49.560 | at a deeper level this year than last year,
00:33:52.200 | then you're selling it short.
00:33:55.920 | There's always more.
00:33:57.160 | There's always more to understand about God's love for us
00:33:59.980 | and how He is so tender toward us.
00:34:04.980 | And just marvel at God becoming human on our behalf.
00:34:11.440 | - Maybe that's it.
00:34:15.280 | That's a great place to end.
00:34:17.600 | What will make the Christmas story wonderful again?
00:34:24.920 | And maybe it is to marvel at the love
00:34:29.000 | that God showed us in that manger so long ago.
00:34:34.000 | I hope that as you reflect on Christmas this year
00:34:38.960 | and what the Lord is trying to share with you
00:34:41.840 | and show you through the story,
00:34:45.560 | that you will be full and that you will be filled
00:34:49.720 | and that you will be moved to serve.
00:34:52.720 | Thank you for sharing, David.
00:34:54.560 | I appreciate you sharing your Advent thoughts
00:34:56.880 | with us today and you'll come back.
00:35:00.220 | - It was a lot of fun, yeah.
00:35:01.200 | - Yeah.
00:35:02.040 | And listeners, I appreciate you being with me today,
00:35:05.240 | being with us as we celebrate Advent together.
00:35:09.420 | If you are looking for ways to find community
00:35:14.080 | in the new year, I wanna give you one thing
00:35:16.160 | to think about as we go.
00:35:19.160 | The classical learning cohort
00:35:22.560 | is a made-for-you community.
00:35:25.880 | As you are cultivating new skills
00:35:29.920 | and growing in confidence
00:35:31.960 | as you provide an education for your children,
00:35:34.320 | sometimes you are looking for a group of friends
00:35:37.320 | to talk over big ideas with.
00:35:40.560 | You can experience the classical learning cohort.
00:35:44.920 | There is an Ask a Mentor event
00:35:49.880 | that will give you a little bit of a firsthand knowledge
00:35:53.800 | of what to expect from the classical learning cohort
00:35:56.880 | if you're not sure if you want to get involved with that.
00:36:00.480 | Registration is now open.
00:36:04.000 | So that registration is open now
00:36:06.160 | and it closes on the 1st of February.
00:36:10.040 | So think about becoming part
00:36:13.320 | of the classical learning cohort
00:36:16.920 | and you can find out about it
00:36:21.240 | and sign up and those classes will begin
00:36:24.560 | in early February of 2025, okay?
00:36:29.160 | All right, listeners, I appreciate you
00:36:31.600 | and I will see you next week.
00:36:34.520 | (gentle music)
00:36:37.100 | you
00:36:39.160 | [BLANK_AUDIO]