"A Better Seat At The Manger"

This weeks blog is provided by

Dave's son, Rev. Peter McKechnie. 

“A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.  Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns on his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born. And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with an iron scepter…”.    Romans 12:1-5

Ever seen THAT illustrated on a Christmas card?!  …Me either.

Desire forging design!  Destiny living in danger! An infant King! A resident threat! And the fight is on…  Revelation 12 reads as Heaven’s raw, thundering parallel to the soft, earthy narratives that we circle around this season.  At the same instant there was no room at the inn, there was a rumble in the eternities.  Powers and principalities clash, the Bible tells.

Philip Yancey calls Jesus’ birth “…the Great Invasion…” and a “…daring raid… into the universe’s seat of evil!”  Want a candy cane with that?

This year, this Christmas, I wanted… no, needed to get another angle, a new view, a better seat at the manger.  Truthfully, I am always living in danger of domesticating the divine.  See, I’ve begun to feel as though I’ve wrung all of the wonder and expectation right out of the stable. Everything just seems so familiar. The donkey ride, the desperation, shepherds on night-shift, the angelic presence, drive-by kings; I mean I’ve heard it all before.

And then I rediscovered Revelation’s angle on the birth of Christ! Jesus came not to be coddled, but to recapture our hearts, to win us back, charging into a world that isn’t so serine and civilized.  Truth is, there’s so much at play in this moment of child-bearing! Heaven and earth conspire and the Creator King is at it again, this time giving us his most precious gift: The Prince, His One and Only, our Peace!

I love thinking on the Truth that boldly says I’ve got a Messiah that’s crazy for my heart and willing to war for it!

What do you need to rediscover about Christmas?  What’s going to keep this season from sneaking back into a religious routine?

Peter McKechnie