Jesus Left the Familiar

The familiarity is gone.  We live in a new place.  We have new responsibilities.  A new church.  Reaching for new relationships.  The familiar is behind us, and Christmas has come.  If any time of the year stirs the emotions, Christmas does.  We have already done a lot of new things this year, and those things are good.  But the familiar is gone.  We even have some new blessings, big blessings, because they have brought us closer to some, although we have had to say good-bye to others.  The reminder though has come, boldly outlined, and all lit up, cause that’s the way God sometimes does things.  Jesus left the familiar at Christmas.  All the perfections and intimacies of Heaven – He left the familiar behind.  Why?  His Father had promises to fulfill, a plan for His Son to accomplish, a people, loved by the Father, but estranged to Him, a people the Father chose to sacrificially give to so estrangement could become intimacy.  The plan was shaped by His heart millenniums before, and now it was time.  Jesus left the familiar, and at Christmas, in tiny human form, He was placed in a manger in Bethlehem.  He would journey from the manger to a tortuous cross where God’s love would meet His holiness so He could fully embrace the very people He had always loved.

Sometimes we lose familiarity because we lose the one we love – a spouse, a parent, a child, a close friend.  That one is no longer here, and all the warm and familiar has changed.  And Christmas comes in the midst of harshness and pain, brokenness and confusion.  The thousand questions silence the Christmas music.  Why?  When will the pain stop?  Can I really, really know His embrace?  Can He still give tomorrows that will be good – tomorrows that can still allow me to find a place in His plan?

Jesus left the familiar at Christmas.  Mine is gone too – and maybe, yours.  I have faced the unfamiliar when life demanded change and being a newbie.  And I have faced the unfamiliar with loss – deep, searing loss that darkens the Christmas lights, silences the music, brings the heaviness of winter clouds my arms literally ache to push away – and I know others have as well.

O Jesus. Precious Jesus.
Born a baby.
Smelly manger hay, scratchy animals.
And all of Heaven gazing.
You wake the world to the love of Your Father.
O Jesus ........
Thank You for leaving the familiar.
Thank You for giving me a love so big, so unchangeable.
When my own familiar lies torn and shredded,
A distant memory.
Remind me of Your love, and help Your love
To be enough.

                                                                                                                                                                                 – Bev

(Related Bible reading: Galatians 4:4-7; 1 John 4:9,10)