dearly

Christmas cannot be bought. Christmas cannot be created. Christmas cannot be made by hand. Christmas can only be found.  - from How to Wait for Christmas by Ann Voskamp, December 16, 2010 

 

Last night was Priya's second annual school Christmas program. She's been talking for weeks about the things they had been practicing: the songs in German, a song called "Infant Lowly", all the time she has to sit and wait for her class's turn to practice.

The whole school is up there singing in the picture. Priya is closest to the pulpit on the right side. And she knew her part. But the sweetest part was a song in German called "Gott ist die Liebe", which they explained can be most closely translated as "God Loves Me Dearly". The preschoolers and kindergartners along with the first and second graders, probably no more than a dozen total, sang that song with gusto in German.

God loves me dearly
Grants me salvation,
God loves me dearly,
Loves even me.

Therefore I'll say again:
God loves me dearly,
God loves me dearly,
Loves even me.

I'm guessing the teaching somewhere along the way in school has been about how Jesus, even though King of the Universe, was born in the barn, because on more than one occasion Priya has discussed this.

"Mom, regular kings would be born in a nice place. Here Jesus was born in a barn."

On the same street, less than five blocks west, there is another first grade class learning too. I don't know what their teacher can tell them about Christmas. I wonder if they are picking up much amazement about God being born in the barn. Perhaps they are. But for sure, the first graders fifteen minutes north or twenty minutes south are learning a fixation on well-worn tales of flying deer and a fat man who promises behavioral omniscience but delivers packages of plastic and such that will likely see the inside on the dumpster before July. That, instead of real Omniscient that sees each messy human heart and loved them dearly enough to provide lasting peace, love, hope, joy...

Christmas is that God loves me dearly. And with that in mind, our obsession with shopping for gifts and planning gatherings looks so far out of line. Like Santa Claus, these gatherings and gifts were to be catalysts to let us see how dearly God loves us, not the main course. 

From my human mind, how sad and disappointed I would feel if the gift I gave, spent days and weeks planning, was forgotten. Instead the ribbon tied on top, that really is only shiny on one side was the main attraction. And the wrapping. And the UPS driver who brought it to the door. And the gift inside was lost under the trimmings.

 The first messengers were shiny and loud and the first to hear it were stinky shepherds. Last night the messengers were a little shiny and quite a bit loud, but not at all angels. But I imagine that quite a few of those that heard the message felt quite a lot the same as those first stinky shepherds. Amazed that a very big God would love them dearly.