Six days. I still have trouble realizing that Christmas will be here in just six days. I feel like we just finished summer! But whether I feel like it’s time or not, Christmas will arrive. Whether I am ready or not, it will happen. Whether or not I have all my shopping done – Christmas will occur.
It reminds me of when I was waiting on my children (one through adoption and one through pregnancy). I never felt I had their baby rooms just perfect, yet they still arrived. I didn’t feel that I had everything accomplished – but they were both born into the world. I didn’t finish the grand quilt I had planned for Hannah, and I didn’t finish it when I re-started it for Brooks; it is still unfinished packed up in a box somewhere in our garage.
Babies arrive on their own schedule, not ours. I would imagine that Mary and Joseph would have thought and felt many of the same things I did with my children – but Jesus was born whether or not they were fully ready. Perhaps that is part of the beauty of babies, Christmas, and God.
If we waited until we had everything perfect – our babies might not ever arrive.
If we waited until we had everything spotless, decorated, wrapped, and prepared – we might not ever get to celebrate Christmas.
And if we waited until we had everything right in our lives – we might not ever get to God. And that is why God comes to us. God comes to us when we’re busy, ill-prepared, and imperfect. God comes to us because we need God and God loves us.
Christmas is the reminder that God comes to us. Emmanuel – “God with us”. I’m so glad that the best things in life came on their own schedule and not mine. I might not have considered myself “ready”, but the joy of my children’s arrivals is still beyond measure.
Christmas will take place in six days, ready or not. Rejoice that we’re on Christ’s schedule, because He doesn’t want to wait to be with us.
