Sometimes you have to go where you don’t want to go to get where you want to be.
That may not be the easiest sentence to diagram or the most comfortable principle to accept, but I believe it’s true. And I think it lies at the very heart of Christmas.
This truth has bobbed in and out of my consciousness fairly often in recent weeks. Still aching from a recent orthopedic surgery and still temporarily living in this smallish apartment, I’ve been working hard to combat the Grinchy mood that has threatened to descend upon me.
I was spoiled by years of country living and lots of elbow room, so apartment life isn’t really my cup ’o tea. It’s certainly no big deal in the overall scheme of things—more like a pesky gnat than a roaring lion—but the gnat grew more annoying in recent weeks when I realized that all of our Christmas decorations were buried in a very inaccessible corner of our rented storage unit. Getting to our holiday décor was going to be next to impossible, so we decided to forget it this year.
I’d like to boast that I’m such a spiritual giant that the lack of Christmas “stuff” is absolutely no big deal to me … but the truth is, I’m not that spiritual. (Think pygmy, not giant.)
The truth is, I want to see those tacky Power Ranger ornaments with my sons’ names on them hanging on a real tree. I want to shake up my Veggie Tales snow globe. I want to be surrounded by all of our personal Christmas paraphernalia.
But, no dice. We would’ve had to use a forklift to blaze a path to the back of that storage unit. I bought a few pint-sized decorations, but our bland halls are woefully decked this year.
It’s okay, I tell myself. This is temporary. This is necessary.
This apartment is where we had to go in order to get where we really want to be—in our new house, on our farm.
Life is full of these trade-offs.
We endure medical procedures to restore our health (don’t even get me started on that one); we torture ourselves in gyms to become fit; we force ourselves to study to become educated; we work to pay the bills.
I hate to be so pragmatic about a wonderfully sentimental holiday, but as I said before, this principle is pretty foundational to Christmas: Jesus went where He didn’t want to go to get where He really wanted to be—close to the beloved people He created.
If we miss that point, we’ve missed THE point.
God wanted so much to rescue and adopt us that He left heaven to come to this very unheavenly world. Christmas is part of God’s grand, loving pursuit, His epic rescue mission.
We’re used to imagining baby Jesus, peaceful shepherds and idyllic “Silent Night” scenes when, in the spiritual realm, Christmas probably looked much more like an Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick.
“For He rescued us from thedomain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son,” the Apostle Paul wrote (Colossians 1:13).
To extract us from the “domain of darkness,” God charged right into the middle of it with His redemption guns blazing. It couldn’t have felt very peaceful or silent for the powers of darkness Jesus came to vanquish.
If you’re someplace you don’t want to be this Christmas, pause and remember the One we’re honoring—Jesus Christ, the One who temporarily went where He didn’t want to go to be where He eternally wants to be: With you. With me. Forever.
The question of this season, and all seasons, is this: How will we respond to so great a love?