Prepare Him Room

Christmas is a great evangelistic opportunity. However, with the gun going off to tie up work, attend events, plan gatherings, buy gifts, and somehow still function after it all – how could I ever add in evangelism? 

Rather than tell you to share the gospel, I want to ponder the glory of Christmas for, before Christmas is a time of proclamation, it is a time to make room in our hearts for adoration. From a full heart, the mouth will speak.

Centuries ago, in a backwater Israeli town, an angel came to a common girl with staggering news: though she was a virgin, she would conceive by the Holy Spirit and bear a son, who would be called Saviour (Jesus) and God-with-us (Immanuel, Matt 1:18-25; Luke 1:26-38). Mary’s response is also staggering: she simply makes room for God to act – not generally in the world, but specifically in her womb, ‘let it be to me according to your word’ (Luke 1:38). 

Why does this matter? First, this act of God is not prior to the gospel but is itself the beginning of the gospel. At key moments in Jesus’ life there is darkness: darkness in the womb, at the cross, in the tomb, and the pre-dawn darkness of the resurrection. Darkness holds all these moments together as one great act of God.

Second, this one act of God is nothing less than new creation. The overshadowing Spirit (Luke 1:35) and the moments of darkness point us back to the darkness at the very beginning, when the Spirit hovered over the waters as God prepared to speak creation into existence (Gen 1:1-2). And so, as the Spirit conceives and implants the embryonic Son of God in Mary’s womb, God begins his new creation work. 

By entering the world through the womb, God signals that he is not done with our earthiness. The new is not rescue from, but the renewal of physical reality.

Secularism says my fleshly existence is an accidental given. Eastern religion and Western New Age may worship nature, but only to touch the divine and escape the flesh. Jewish and Islamic views may honour the material world as God’s creation, but not as our destination. And the deeper we go into the Silicon Valley age, the harder it is to value our sheer earthiness – the real me is deep inside this bag of skin and bones. 

But God loves our fleshiness, for he was not embarrassed to enter Mary’s womb, nor to be comforted by her embrace, nor to be sustained at her breast. By taking on not only a gruesome cross but also a gory birth, our saviour takes upon himself our entire, earthy humanity, gathering up every moment from birth to death. 

Not only does this give motherhood the greatest possible dignity – from the pain, tears and fears of pregnancy and birth to that great labour of raising a child – it also gives the greatest possible dignity to humanity: fleshy, vulnerable, and glorious.

The great irony is that for all the things we rush to do, from the school performance to the gathered meal or flopping on the couch at the end of it all – all ordinary, sometimes mundane things, and all valuable things precisely because of the baby in the manger!

At the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1980’s, when stigma was high and patients felt their humanity stripped away in lonely isolation and rejection, Diana, the People’s Princess, did something staggering. She reached out to touch a man dying from AIDS and gave him back his humanity. Already beautiful in the people’s eyes, she now shone with glory. 

How much more glorious is Jesus, who comes down not just to touch our humanity, but to take it upon himself, to gather it up, and to bring it with him into his new-creation. 

I want to encourage us this Christmas season to make room in our hearts and homes to adore our glorious Jesus. Whether through the songs we play, the decorations we place, the devotions we read, in any and every way, let our hearts be filled with his glory until, by adoring our saviour, we can’t help but take every opportunity to speak of him.

Callan Pritchard
Associate Minister

Pray: Give thanks for the joy of Christmas, where God took on flesh to dwell among us and bring salvation through Jesus Christ. Ask God for hearts filled with adoration for Jesus, reflecting on his humility in coming as a baby to renew creation. Ask God to help his people share this good news with others, speaking of his glory with joy and confidence.