linnposts.com

When our oldest grandson was young he gave Joy a birthday card that said, “Happy birthday, Grandma. Just think, if you were Jesus, today would be Christmas.”

He was exactly right even if he was too young to realize it. Christmas is about the birth of Jesus and that is all its about. Everything else is peripheral.

Christmas is about the birth of a child who grew to be a man who changed the world. History is divided by his birth. The largest religious movement in the world is focused on his life and teachings. Whether people follow his way of life or not, the world over knows his name.

The truth is, though, every birthday is Christmas for the family of the child born, a time of celebration because it marks the moment a person who changes the world around them takes his or her first breath. Everyone does, change the world, that is. Lives around every birth are affected by it, changed by it, some dramatically, others tangentially.

What is more, nothing can ever change what happened when we were born. We live in-between birth and death, but nothing alters what happened at the precise moment of our birth. That remains forever.

Christmas reminds us of the miracle of birth itself, the moment when a baby’s cry is as beautiful as any musical note ever written, played, or sung. What our grandson didn’t understand, couldn’t understand, is that his grandma’s birthday was Christmas day for her family, for her mother, father, two older siblings, grandparents, many others, a moment of joy and celebration that changed the world for everyone who knew her then, and knows her now.

So it is with your birthday, my birthday, everyone’s birthday. The potential present at every birth can certainly be wasted, lost, or corrupted, but nothing can destroy the beauty and joy of that singular moment when a life comes into the world.

Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus, a day scripture says made angels sang, kings travel a long distance to kneel in front of his crib, made shepherds’ fear dissolve the moment their minds were opened to the mystery of God at work in the world.

Transcending the story of his birth allows us to embrace the preciousness of every life, the connection of all of us because we come into this world the exact same way. Like it or not, we are literally in this thing called life together.

So don’t let the current Trump political darkness that has settled over our nation diminish the amazing grace surrounding the birth of Jesus, and yours and mine and every birth that happens.

Jesus is born, you and I are born, inextricably bound to one another as sisters and brothers, neighbors and friends, enemies only when we forget who we are and why we were born.

So Merry Christmas everyone, for Jesus was born, and so were you.