"Nothing was perfect about the first Christmas--except the Baby." --Louie Giglio
Nothing. Not one thing was right--there was no magical Christmas music playing in the background, no gracious shepherds or mighty kings humbled at the sight of the Babe. The perfection that we weave around our Christmas celebrations now was most certainly not how it started. The scandal around Mary's pregnancy and the fact that Joseph didn't have her lawfully stoned, the stable (probably an indentation-like cave that animals sought refuge in), the animals that did NOT smell nice, the manger that wasn't clean, the shepherds who were a rough and bawdy bunch, and the fact that Joseph had to deliver the baby (and probably felt a little pressure about it, since, you know, it was GOD and everything). The Magi didn't even show up for another two years.
Events in my life the past week have led me to this place of contemplation. Christmas is a wonderful time--a celebration, out of the ordinary, meant to stop us from normal life and rejoice in the fact that Jesus came down. But the pressure for it all to be 'perfect'--now that is totally man-made. And the very un-perfect reality I (and most of us) are living in right now doesn't seem to fit with the 'perfection' of the season. So please, this joyful Christmas season, stop and ponder with me--amidst the pain, and the mess, and the stress and un-perfection--stop and ponder the fact that perfection does not need to exist for God's purposes to be accomplished. Perfection does not need to be present to have a joyful Yuletide. He came into a mess of a world; the perfect, unblemished Baby came into the broken world to bring us the promise of perfection. This Christmas, remember that nothing was perfect about that first Christmas--nothing except the most important part: the Baby.