I know I’m early with Christmas thoughts, but I’m feeling a little nostalgic as I write this. I wasn’t planning to put up the Christmas tree. It’s just us, after all and we don’t need to fit gifts under a tree. I intended to just put the nativity set on the mantle and leave everything else in the boxes downstairs. Some of those boxes need to go…but I’m not there yet.
I’ve been listening to Christmas music for three days now. I always love the words to some old and some new songs, even if I’ve heard them a zillion times before. One song in particular will always hold a special meaning for me—ever since the year my dad went to be with Jesus.
I’ve probably told the story before, but it bears repeating, at least to me.
My dad was a man of great faith. He came to love the Scriptures at some point in his younger years because he read the Bible cover to cover every year. After a while, those words start to permeate who you are and no matter where life takes you, the Word goes with you. Daddy carried the Word in his heart until his dying day.
He left me a great legacy of faith that I hope everyone he loved shares. He prayed for all of us, and I can’t think of a better gift than prayer, which I try to pass on to my family.
But the memory of my dad that surfaces at Christmas is the song O Holy Night. Daddy had been diagnosed with leukemia and he didn’t have many months to live. The last week of his life here, I walked into his nursing home room with our traditional McDonald’s lunch. He wasn’t doing so well though and didn’t eat much.
When he laid eyes on me, the first words out of his mouth were, “Sing O Holy Night.” Now I used to sing solos in church years ago, but that didn’t mean I trusted my voice much at that point. The hospice nurse had already declined the request, and my mom seemed hesitant.
I said, “You want me to sing, O Holy Night?” It was November and not the most typical request he’d ever given. In fact, I don’t think he’d ever asked me to sing for him.
He said, “Yes.” And I said, “Okay.” And so I sang part of the song for him, which brought a look of peace to his expression. I can never hear that song without picturing Daddy in that bed listening.
I look around at Christmas today (Daddy died 8 years ago) and I think—would he recognize this world? I rather doubt it. We don’t celebrate Jesus like we used to. Some of us do. But so many have decided that He wasn’t that big of a deal. Some deny that He could have been God. Others think He was a good man. Most are probably indifferent, which is actually the worst thing we can be toward Jesus Messiah.
I get it. Try to wrap your head around the idea that God and man were one person, begotten, not created, somehow different than anyone else who ever lived. Religious leaders of His day didn’t recognize Him as God. They just saw a man who could do miracles. (Seems like the miracles might have given them a hint…)
The thing is One Holy Night about two thousand years ago God’s Spirit merged with the body of a human female virgin and nine months later Jesus was born. It’s a well known story of Mary and Joseph and yet it is not told nearly enough. I daresay that we don’t really grasp what that moment was like or why all of the angels considered it glorious and holy.
And I will never know why that moment as my dad was nearing the time when he would meet Jesus face to face, that the best thing he could think about was His Savior’s birth.
Because the thing is? Without the birth of the Messiah, there is no reason for faith. If you wipe Christ out of Christmas, you have gift giving and spending too much money. But add Jesus to that manger where he actually laid during His infant stay in Bethlehem, and then you can have the rest of the story. Like every other human who lives a typical life on this earth, Jesus grew up. But then He took on the ministry His Father had given Him to do from time’s beginning. He was born with His focus always looking toward the cross where he would die.
He could endure the torture of the cross because of the joy set before Him—resurrection was coming—death would be defeated. Satan crushed. And the purpose for that Holy Night fulfilled. At last God and man could become one in unity. Not one in a person as Jesus was, but unified in faith, hope, love, and our relationship to God.
Maybe my dad was thinking all of those things when he asked me to sing, O Holy Night. Maybe not. But whatever his thoughts were that day, He knew that the birth of the Son was the reason he could tell the nursing staff that he was going to be with his Father. Daddy never forgot Jesus, even when he struggled to remember what he’d had for breakfast that day.
I pray for all of you who might be reading this that if Christmas is just another holiday to you…if you do not understand the holiness of that night or the reason Jesus came, that you would take the time to discover why. Discover His love for you. Maybe you knew it once and left it behind you. Did you know that God’s love can’t be left? Turn around and you will find Him waiting there, arms wide open to love you again.
Then when you think of Christmas, you will realize that it truly was a holy night when Christ was born. It was the start to the greatest gift God could ever offer to us—eternal life in Him. All because of Jesus.
~Selah
#livegrace #ohholynight #oneholynight #jesusisthereasonfortheseason #christmasisjesus
