Friends, Christmas has always been a big deal to me, even when I didn’t know Jesus was near. See the column below. Have a great week!  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #891

December 12, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

The Lord is Near, Part 3

By Bob Walters

“The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.” – Psalms 145:18

I’ve always been a big fan of Christmas, even when I didn’t know Jesus.

My parents made a big deal of it when I was a child, including Christmas Eve church. When living alone after college, I made a big deal of it, trimming a “real” tree in my small rental house. Upon marriage and parenthood, we made a big deal of it.  And now as a busy but empty-nester senior citizen, I put up more Christmas lights than ever.

“There’s a kind of hush, all over the world, tonight” was a pop-song lyric from the mid-1960s (by Herman’s Hermits) that had nothing to do with Christmas as a song but, now that I think about it, the words have everything to do with the truth of Christmas.

That “kind of hush” exactly describes Christmas Eves throughout my life. But I have to reflect back, in light of a new discovery at age 47, what that “hush” actually was and always had been: the true Lord and Savior Jesus Christ standing close to me, and the Holy Spirit saying, “Shhh … the baby is sleeping,” and “Jesus, the truth, is near.”

Christmas for me is not an exercise in precise definitions; truth is often that way.

I’m completely OK not knowing exactly when Jesus was born, and that the common nativity narratives, “no room in the inn,” etc., are generally misinterpreted.  Even biblical culture today has little appreciation of the tribe-of-David kinship and semitic hospitality of first-century Bethlehem. (See explanatory links at column’s end.)

An absence of facts does not necessarily mean an absence of truth. Secular philosophy rejects that notion, as it empirically rejects faith: only facts equal truth.  Nor does one’s refusal of faith or a misunderstanding of facts negate reality.

Reality, you see, equals truth, and vice versa; there is nothing more real than God. It is our understanding that needs work: not God’s messaging, and not God’s truth.

The secular, commercial, and winter festival trappings of this “most wonderful time of the year” (Andy Williams, 1963) bring near to us – unavoidably near to us – great opportunity for nearness to, and danger of distance from, the Lord who saves us.

The Lord is near when our minds and hearts welcome God Almighty into the human race He created for good. And when we embrace the loving, sacrificial, healing, and renewing arrival of His Son, that’s Christmas, that’s nearness to Jesus, that’s hope. 

Christmas at a distance from faith in Christ – as in, Happy Holidays/The Party – can be an unloving grind of obligation and a vacuously missed opportunity for divine, purpose-rich regeneration.  The true Kingdom remains distant if at Christmas the Bible is opaque and Jesus is unseen; gifts and worldly cheer are merely temporal comforts.

I believe it was Luther, or possibly Calvin, who put forth the notion of “prevenient grace.”  That’s when God, who is always looking for you, is also looking out for you before you come to faith in His Son Jesus.  The world’s hush and humanity’s wonder at Christmas is the grace of a God who is already near, inviting us to accept that grace.

I always felt a mysterious, loving hush and closeness at Christmas.  Little did I realize, until I was older, it was Jesus.

It was that kind of hush because the truth was that kind of close.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) offers some middle-eastern insight into Mary, Joseph, Jesus and that night in Bethlehem HERE column 736 and HERE column 372.