You’re almost there.
The Christmas story reaches its climax at the nativity scene, which by design kicks of the climax of an even larger narrative told for the entirety of creation.
…While there is an expectation for the culmination of biblical prophesies and promises, at the same time there’s a raw humanity to that first Christmas story: a teenage girl is expecting – morning sickness, cramps, unreasonable cravings. Her much older fiancee is trying to figure out ways to get rid of her and save face. Within all of this mess an expectation emerges that points to a renewed hope for the world. While Mary and Joseph prepare amidst the chaos under the Bethlehem stars, Jesus smuggles himself into humanity….
Advent gives us cause to pause and wait, a season to ironically push away the noise and instead recapture the storyline that compels us to grasp at hope.
The entirety of the Christian story, the ‘reason for the season’, is how Jesus inaugurates the story God has for creation, a plot dependent on hope, reconciliation, and redemption.
The Christian hope, what Christmas merely previews, is one of ultimate restoration. The plot unravels in the here and now. A hope rooted in our participation to right the wrongs in our part of the world. Big things like justice, power, and love. We preview and foretaste what Christ will ultimately restore.
You can’t ignore the systemic mess humanity faces with every form of brokenness hitting the airwaves like a broken record. Maybe in your life right now you have to cut through the dark.
Yet as sure as the night sky, through the darkness there’s the reminder of a story that takes place from manger to cross that in the very least offers a glimpse of hope beyond the mess.
That’s Christmas, that’s our the Advent expectation, but really the wait is over….hope is here now.