It doesn’t feel like Christmas here. Instead of fresh pine scent and baking sugar cookies I’m surrounded by spicy curry smells cooking in the woks of street vendors. There’s nothing familiar around me. The people I now spend all my time with, I didn’t know a year ago. No family. No cold weather. No Christmas shopping in air conditioned malls looking for a good deal on that last minute gift. There’s no gift wrapping.
There is very little in fact that reminds me that it is the most wonderful time of the year.
In fact I am in a country that doesn’t even recognize or celebrate Christmas. So how does Christmas feel on this side of the world?
Quiet.
But not empty.
I keep going back to the night Christ was born. How quiet it was. Born in a manger. In a stable. For Mary and Joseph there was no family. Nothing familiar. They were in a new place.
And then there were the shepherds, the only ones that God announced the most amazing news in history to… Outside the town, sitting on a hill probably watching and contemplating the Heavens, when their lives were changed forever.
Its quiet here. Nothing else in the merry season to focus on but Christ, Emanuel- the “with us” God.
If you had to choose- and you could have everything you could ever want in this life, but you couldn’t have His presence with you. Or you could have Him with you and that’s it- what would you choose?
I have very little with me in this hemisphere. Everything I hold dear is half a world away. But this might be the closest Christmas I’ve had to the real Christmas meaning.
I get caught up. We get caught up. With the hustle and bustle, the gift giving, the cooking, the baking. All these wonderful heartwarming Christmas traditions with our families. But in that, God, help us to focus our hearts on the quietness and gentleness of the birth of Your Son, the lamb of God.
I’m writing this outside of a Buddhist temple. And I am struck by His name, Emanuel more and more because our God is WITH us. Wow! Think about that!
