Christmas musings (with some rambling)

I should go to the Andrew Peterson Christmas spectacular spectacular ever year. I really should. Because it makes me think about what Christmas is, why it’s important, and helps me to see that the holiday is more about if someone says Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays and if I’ve bought the right gifts and gotten them wrapped.

First of all, when Behold the Lamb of God comes to Nashville, it’s in the Ryman. The Ryman! I sort of have a big ol’ crush on the Ryman. I love the history, the architecture, everything.

Secondly, I should go because of the sheer musicianship in the room. There’s Ben Shive playing the keyboard, piano, and a lap dulcimer, sometimes two at once. There’s the multi-talented Gabe Scott playing every instrument known to man, including the dobro (!), Ron Block and some amazing skills there (plus that 17-year old mandolin player he brought—she was astounding!). There’s Jill Phillip’s beautiful voice and Andy Gullahorn’s witty song about creating the perfect country song. There was Brother Henry, Randall Goodgame, Michael Card, and so much other goodness. Including Bebo, who is still a divo (that’s for you, Brandy!) and is still completely unaware of my existence or that back in 2001 we were going to get married. (I jest! I’m not a stalker. I had a huge crush on the Bebo back in the day!)

But it’s more than that. BTLOG makes me think about Christmas, about what God did. And I realize how many limits I put on God, how often I think He’s like me, limited and constricted by time, space, and so forth. Or how small and personal I make His story of redemption, which is what Christmas is, when instead it’s this huge, epic story spanning centuries and was planned even before creation. Its stage is the world, and we are all players. How amazing is that?! As Michael Card so eloquently pointed out, God has always been about being with us. That was what the Garden of Eden was about, and so was the calling of the Jewish people as a people unto Him, Jesus’ birth, and most certainly, Jesus’ death and resurrection. God is a god of relationship, not religion. He just wants to be with us.

The night also made me consider the scandal of it all. Because when you think about it, the Christmas story is scandalous. It sounds like some crazy fairy tale/conspiracy, with all the searching for a Messiah, going home another way, and the grass roots effort by the shepherds (the lowest members of society) to get the word out. There’s a betrothed but not exactly married teenage mother, a fiancé who loves her but considers putting her away to keep the scandal away from him, and a birth in a stable that was all wrong for a Jewish girl who should have had the help of midwives, sisters, and her mother by her side. Instead she got a stable in a town that was not her home and Joseph, holding her hand in his worn carpenter’s hands.

But the longer I walk in faith and understand the bigness of God and how incapable of completely understanding Him I am, the more I understand that God likes to work in the scandals, in the moments when we are weakest and unable to go on. Because in those moments, He is able to display His glory and show the world, yet again, that He is writing a story and drawing people to Himself.