Christmas is just around the corner and that is hard to miss – at least in the U.S. Outdoor lights and Christmas trees have been up for weeks, people have been busy shopping and stores have been busy luring customers with enticing sales on must-have items to give.
Here in Kenya – not so much.
Most of the country lies south of the Equator, which means that our seasons are opposite to those in the States. While the weather has turned cold for most of the U.S., Kenya is sliding into warmer months with temps into the low eighties under sunny skies. Hardly the weather we associate with Christmas.
On top of that, Christmas decorations are much harder to come by here. When we searched for a small artificial tree and some decorations, we were told that decorations had only recently become a thing. No one hangs outdoor lights, and many do not put up trees. On Christmas Day itself, people head to their native villages to have goat roasts with families. Exchanging presents is hardly done and there is not a Christmas card to be found since Kenya has no mail service to speak of.
You could say that Christmas in Kenya is sneaking up on us, and that is reminiscent of the under-the-radar miracle we celebrate.
God’s appointed Savior was born. Not in a palace or a mansion, but in a stable and placed in a manger – hardly the environment you associate with childbirth, let alone the occurrence of a divine turning point in history. The busy crowds hustling around to respond to Caesar’s census didn’t notice. The only announcements were an angelic visitation to a despised group of folk – shepherds out in the field tending to their flock. And the glaringly obvious sign in the sky, the Bethlehem Star, was only recognized by three stargazers far away. You could say the long-awaited Savior was snuck into humanity. The turning point in history didn’t look like a turning point at all!
I was invited to preach on Christmas Day at CITAM Ngong, our new home church – a large English-speaking congregation where we are the only foreigners. I chose a text that is not normally associated with Christmas, but describes the miracle in the manger well:
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11)
Between Jesus’ initial divinity, as the Second Person of the godhead through whom the universe was created and is being sustained (see Colossians 1:16-17), and His exaltation into the name above all names lies the time He became one of us – being born in our likeness.
It took an enormous amount of self-sacrifice to leave His omnipotent and glorious divinity behind to take on the vulnerability of a baby boy born away from the public eye into a family of humble origin from a town of ill-repute and become a human being destined for death.
The miracle is not just that He landed safely and was rescued from Satan’s attempt to snuff out the life of the Savior through the evil mind of Herod. It is that God loved human beings like us with a nature hostile to Him to leave divinity behind, to be born this way, and to take up the cross so we may be saved.
The miracle of the manger is that ” God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Let that sink in for a moment. What would you do if you were in the place of the Second Person? Would you turn your back on beings you created in your image but who had become hostile to you, committing every imaginable act that violates your holy nature? It requires love completely devoid of self-preservation and self-interest to say, “I’ll become a baby just like them so I can grow up, become a homeless preacher, show them my kingdom in a language they understand, and then take the penalty they deserve on myself by dying in their place on a Roman cross.”
There is no greater love than that. The baby boy would not grow up to become an ordinary man to have a family and have baby boys himself. He would grow up to show us the Father in heaven and die dishonorably before being exalted to the highest place in the heavenly realms.
When you go about the busyness of fixing feasts and purchasing gifts, take some time to meditate on the miracle of the manger, and how a new outpouring of God’s love for mankind began – after 400 years of silence. Let it warm your heart an deepen your delight in your loving heavenly Father.
“Mild He lays His glory by
Born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth
Born to give them second birth
Hark! The herald angels sing
“Glory to the newborn King!”
Jennifer and I wish you a merry, Christ-filled Christmas and a New Year full of spiritual prosperity!
Photo credit: Kenneth Lin/Unsplash