How does the incarnation help me navigate the chaos and busyness of the Christmas season?

In America, the sprint between Thanksgiving and Christmas tempts us to try to be all things to all people. If we can squeak in one last party, or tie one last bow, or pick up one last gift bad things won’t happen. And while the insane social/cultural pressure makes this understandable at the end of the day it pushes us past the limits of our humanity. We spend money we don’t have. We miss sleep we couldn’t afford to. We pour ourselves into relationships trying to smile when a lot of things are wrong.

And then we crash.

But the Incarnation of Jesus invites us into a different experience. In taking to himself humanity, God the Son demonstrated that humanity was sufficiently “big” to reveal God’s heart. And what that means is if ordinary humanity is big enough to reveal God in then it’s certainly big enough to experience God in. You don’t have to push yourself past your boundaries to know Christ. In fact it’s exactly in the limits of our boundaries that we experience the sufficiency of Jesus.

It’s to people who can’t tie one more bow, put on one more smile, or buy one more present that Jesus says “come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest”.

So finding Christ in Advent doesn’t require becoming super-human but rather comes through accepting that you are beautifully and merely human - and that means you're limited. So turn to Christ at the point of your insufficiency and let him be enough for you and enough for your friends and enough for your family. Turn to him in all your limits and lacks until you become less and less and he becomes to your heart more and more.

Merry Christmas and let us all adore him.