I Hope For You …

I Hope You Linger!

Maybe today, this week, next week, or after New Year, but I hope it happens for you!

Most of us put it up and take it down, pass it every day, maybe explain The pieces to children, but have you ever lingered and wondered? I mean several minutes into hours wonder. They’re not simply shaped figures for Christmas celebration. They represent real live breathing people who surrounded a manger in Bethlehem over 2,000 years ago.

It’s easy to dehumanize them into decor and caricatured people. But they were people just like you and me. They knew hunger, cold, warmth, and longing. They had families, dreams, and occupations.

Angels visited them … okay, stop right there! Angels came and spoke to them concerning God’s working! WHAT? If you can’t linger on the rest, certainly this is a hard stop! An ANGEL appeared and spoke to them, giving them instructions from God. This alone blows my mind! So many questions popcorn in my head. What was it like? Did they believe it happened after the angel left? How did they continue “normal” life after that visitor came to them? How did they so easily believe his words? Would I? What did they think was happening when this creature from heaven appeared? Did they weep? I think I would have melted into a puddle. How did they take all the information given during this unheard of appearing? Did they have a premonition about something beforehand? How did God prepare them? What did it feel like to be with a heavenly being? … endless questions!

Visited by Angels and Lead by Stars! Those are the players in this tabletop scene. Frozen in time on our mantels, tables, shelves and bookcases. In reality, these were not porcelain, wooden pieces boxed up and hauled out once a year! They are so far beyond our sentimental constructs.

Each piece can stop you in your tracks and lead you to a holy divine place…a place of the soul, if you let it!

Linger!!

It takes a slow pace of the soul. Running in and out, up and down, frantic to prepare the “perfect” celebration will not produce it. Your body has to stop: your brain and soul engage the truths of the story and its participants.

It’s the most beautiful miraculous story ever told!!!

We stop the world to celebrate because it’s magnanimous! It’s beyond! Never happened before or after! It changes hearts and salvages souls. It rescues us from ourselves! And introduces us to The One True Love!

I hope you’ll linger!

Imagine the life of a shepherd, the sky full of angels making proclamations, shock, fear, questions, obedience.

Imagine Joseph bearing the ridicule of society to obey God’s wishes for him to parent the Son of God. I’m sure he lost business because he kept a fiancé who appeared unfaithful and pregnant from another. He could have chosen many paths, but marrying Mary in her condition was not the acceptable one. Imagine the reality of being a father to this heavenly child … terrifying!

Imagine Mary, the Wisemen, the animals and more.

Imagine that angelic face laying in an animal’s trough, which in Israel at the time were stone. My heart weeps. A cold, hard, smelly, noisy start for a King! He traded heaven … linger there!!