It all started with a gingerbread house… or so I thought.
It was December 23 last year, and my three year old son, Gideon, and I were making a traditional Christmas gingerbread house out of gingerbread, icing, and candy. And everyone knows you can’t make a gingerbread house without eating some icing in the process.
To say we ate “some” would be an understatement.
However, it wasn’t long after the tacky masterpiece was complete that I started to feel, well, questionable, and the next several hours found Gideon and me both clutching our stomachs and promising never to set our sights on another gingerbread house again.
After a sleepless night, we discovered that my husband, Jason, was now suffering from the same plight, and he hadn’t had so much as a lick of gingerbread icing like we had. The poor little pathetic house was innocent after all, and we realized that what we thought was an overindulgence of icing was actually just a holiday visit from the dreaded “stomach bug.” It had shown up right in time to ruin our Christmas Eve.
For us, Christmas Eve always meant the same thing – attending not just one, but all three Christmas Eve services at church. It didn’t have to be that way, of course. I didn’t have any obligations or responsibilities during the services like Jason did, so I could have easily picked one service to attend and spent the rest of the day at home. But the truth was I loved bundling up in a comfy Christmas sweater and spending Christmas Eve camped out at church all day. I loved going to the Children’s service and waving crazy glow sticks in the air with my kids. I loved seeing my family and wishing everyone a Merry Christmas one last time before the big day. And I loved holding my candle high in the air and singing “O Holy Night” during the beautiful candlelight services.
But instead of a Christmas Eve that met my expectations and followed tradition, I got a semi-miserable day in my pajamas surrounded by fellow sickies all just trying to eat enough to salvage enough strength for Christmas day. It felt so wrong to be at home on Christmas Eve and not at church. It threw the whole holiday off and was not at all how I expected the celebration to unfold.
It all felt so underwhelming.
Thankfully, a day of rest did us all good, and we were back on the typical Christmas day agenda the next morning. We tried to forget the lost day and move on, but realized there was one aspect of our Christmas Eve tradition that we couldn’t forget completely. Typically, we would take advantage of the Christmas Eve services at church to give our special Christmas offering – this year our Living Proof commitment – but because we hadn’t gone to church, we were unable to do so this time.
So in between visits from one family’s house to the next, we swung by the church and ran in to drop off our offering in what we thought would be a quick, anticlimactic trip.
We were wrong.
Instead we found ourselves standing on the stage in front of the deserted auditorium singing happy birthday to Jesus while our two boys looked up at us like maybe we had lost our minds. It was wonderful. In those few minutes, we were able to focus on our gift as a true sacrifice of praise rather than a Christmas obligation. And we were able to include our children in the intimate moment instead of simply dropping a check in a box unceremoniously without a moment of prayer or thanks.
It was as if – while “Christmas” was going on all around us – we had our own, private audience with the King, and it ended up being one of our favorite Christmas memories.
We all have traditions and expectations of Christmas, don’t we? There are certain things we expect to happen, and when they don’t, it’s easy to feel disappointed. But it turns out that God is not at all concerned with meeting our expectations, and He’s probably less concerned with our silly little traditions.
Instead, like always, He’s concerned with our relationship. He lives for those one-on-one moments in which we’re really listening, and He often moves contrary to all expectations simply because He wants us to see Him.
I couldn’t help but think about the expectations associated with the first Christmas. The Jews expected a Messiah who would come in glory and splendor and rule with pomp and majesty.
Instead they got a tiny baby in a humble manger.
Don’t you think that’s why so many of them missed it? The realities of “Christmas” did not align with their expectations for it, so they failed to see God when He was so plainly right in front of them.
The prophet Elijah experienced something similar. In 1 Kings 19, God tells Elijah to go stand on a mountain because He is about to show Elijah a glimpse of Himself. So Elijah bundles up all of his expectations and climbs to the top of the mountain where He anticipates God will show up with fanfare and drama.
He experiences a great and powerful wind and expects that God might be in the wind, but He isn’t.
After that, he witnesses an awesome earthquake and a tremendous fire, either of which would make perfect a venue to display the God of the universe. But God isn’t in the drama of the earthquake or the fire.
Instead, Elijah hears a gentle whisper, which is not what he expected at all, but he realizes that it is indeed the gentle whisper of God.
At Christmas time especially, it is easy to fall into the practice of expecting God to show up in dramatic moments or unshakeable traditions. We expect to catch a glimpse of God when we raise our candles high at the Christmas Eve service. We expect His presence when we deliver food to the homeless or gifts to needy children. And we’re disappointed if we don’t “feel something” when the radio plays songs about soldiers coming home just in time for Christmas.
But what about the silent nights and the gentle whispers?
Is it even possible to experience those quiet, intimate moments with God when the turkey needs basting, the gifts need wrapping, and the partridge has suddenly disappeared from the pear tree?
Abso – [pause, deep breath, shh, listen] – lutely.
As the old hymn begins, “Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart.” The key to not missing those quiet, intimate moments with God is being still enough to see them. It doesn’t mean that you have to literally stop any and all activity all of the time. It just means that your spirit – the eyes of your heart – must be quiet, attentive, and expectant to see and hear Him when He moves.
The Christmas before the great gingerbread fiasco of 2009, Gideon was two and we were pulling into the church parking lot one day discussing the various things that we were thankful for. After going through the usual Mommy, Daddy, family, house, toys, etc. that he always mentioned, he caught me off guard when he said that he was thankful for the cross.
It may seem like an obvious statement with the 170-foot cross creating a don’t-miss statement on campus, but you must remember – the cross was not there yet. It was still under construction, and all we could see at the time looked like a lot of dirt and mess.
But you know what was on campus that year? A fifty-foot Christmas tree.
It amazed me that of all the things Gideon could have mentioned being thankful for, he mentioned the cross, which he hadn’t seen, instead of the Christmas tree, which he had seen.
Having great expectations of Christmas means seeing the cross instead of the Christmas tree. The manger instead of the mistletoe. And our Savior instead of Santa.
This Christmas, if you find yourself pulling your hair out because everything is not going as you planned or expected, stop and pray. Is God showing you something? Is He trying to get your attention? Is He forcing you to slow down so you’ll see and hear Him?
Pay attention. Listen. He might just be giving you one of your greatest Christmas memories ever.