Candy canes and twinkling lights.

Snow angels and tinseled trees.

Family feasts and family time.

Grateful hearts and a coming Savior.

It’s Christmas.

This time of year I like to grab a warm cup of coffee, snuggle into my floral love seat, open my Bible, and reflect.

Reflect on God’s love demonstrated in the insanity of the nativity.

John 1 is my favorite telling of the Christmas story. The account is beautiful and unconventional. It helps us see Jesus as a person but also as the Light of the world and the Word of Truth.

In verse 14 we read, “The Word (Jesus) became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Reading this verse we see that Jesus didn’t just COME to earth. Jesus CHOSE to make His dwelling among us. He made a heavenly move, leaving perfection and confining himself to flesh. He didn’t take anything with Him, He didn’t enter this world as a powerful prince, or fearless general, but the same way you and I did. He was born as a helpless babe.

A messy infant. A tumbling toddler. A curious child.

Completely dependent on that which HE CREATED.

He didn’t HAVE to come as a baby, but He CHOSE to. That’s what I mean when I say the nativity is INSANE. That humility is unmatched. That sacrifice is unparalleled.

His sacrifice is out of this world.

How rarely do we sacrificially give of ourselves for those we love? Yet Jesus does so not only for those that would love Him, but for everyone, even those who would hate Him for thousands of years to come. He left perfection with the Father to live in the grit and grime of this world. To walk with us, to love us, to relate with us, to show us the BEST way to live.

The intense love that moved Him to such immense sacrifice should warm our souls, fill us till we overflow, cause us to feel MORE loved than anything.

He stepped down from heaven to move to earth. To us. The real estate wasn’t better, that’s for sure. His motivation wasn’t better scenery and a shorter commute. His move to us was to make a way for us to move toward Him.

In John 1:9-12 we read about this motivation: “The true light (Jesus) that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him. He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him. Yet to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.”

He left perfection to show us there is a BEST way to live. A life within His light, a life by His word, a life that realizes the extent of His love and walks in His grace.

This time of year, we are given an opportunity. In the business the season brings we can choose to pause and reflect on the choice that Jesus made.

It’s Christmas, and to Christians it’s MORE than jingle bells and presents, tinseled trees and candy canes, family feasts and family time. It’s a season that celebrates the choice Jesus made. His choice to move toward us in the humblest of ways, that we may move toward Him in the most meaningful of ways. In this season, we celebrate the greatest gift ever given – all we have to do is receive it.