The Beauty of Jesus in the Mess of Our Lives

If you caught it, there is a subtle allusion to the Nickel Creek song “The Beauty and The Mess” that I see the quote below pick up and relate to the person and work of Jesus Christ. This theme runs rampant in lots of other musicians work (U2′s “Grace”, Johnny Cash’s cover and dare I say Nine Inch Nails original “Hurt“, even Mumford & Sons “The Cave“).

 

They gave him a manger for a cradle,
a carpenter’s bench for a pulpit,
thorns for a crown,

and a cross for a throne.

 

He took them and made them his glory.

- William E. Orchard

It’s the theme of the gospel, and it can be seen and read in every page of the Bible. The theme that God is able to bring such ugly, messed up, broken-down circumstances to a beautiful resolution.

It’s why it’s funny to me that what a lot of artists get as true, most people in church do not.

Most of us who go to church and would consider ourselves Christians, if we re honest with ourselves, functionally believe that God is really only in the good stuff – good circumstances, good relationships, good job situations, good family dynamics, etc. And so if anything is broken, messed up and ugly, God can’t have anything to do with it.

We functionally believe that if God is with us, everything should be going well, according to our definition of “well” and our interpretation of our circumstances.

The incarnation, life and death of Jesus Christ turns that wisdom on its head.

What men of the people have over the learned

Another great quote from G.K. Chesterton, again talking about what ordinary, men of the people have over the wise, learned and sophisticated: a greater sense of reality.

“Men of the people, like the shepherds, men of the popular tradition, had everywhere been the makers of the mythologies. It was they who had felt most directly, with least check or chill from philosophy or the corrupt cults of civilisation, the need we have already considered; the images that were adventures of the imagination; the mythology that was a sort of search; the tempting and tantalising hints of something half-human in nature; the dumb significance of seasons and special places. They had best understood that the soul of a landscape is a story and the soul of a story is a personality.”

- G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

The Story of Christmas

In today’s worship service, Martin Ban highlighted something about the story of Christmas from Luke’s gospel that I had not considered before.

“Luke begins his story w/ Jesus in a cave & wrapped in linen and ends the story with a cave & unwrapped from linens.” – Martin Ban (paraphrase)

The story of Christmas is really the story of the gospel. And in Luke, the story begins with Jesus being born in a cave, wrapped in swaddling linens, and ends with Jesus being placed in a burial cave, only to emerge days later and leave his burial linens behind.

The story of Christmas is the story of new life, found in and made possible by Jesus – God with us, making all things new.

Our part?

To receive this story, believe it, and spread it through our lives and with our words.

Merry Christmas everybody! A new day has arrived!