My late brother-in-law, David Khoury painted this beautiful stable scene many years ago. He was an artist of note, and his work has pride of place in homes all over the world, including mine. I was always fascinated by his process. He was a painstaking painter, always seeking to capture the delicate reality of what he saw; not for him the blurred edges of impressionism, or the intriguing interpretations of abstraction. Some of his brushes were so fine they could capture a single hair on a dog’s coat! Details mattered to him. Now that he is home with the Lord he loved so well, I sometimes wonder if he still paints. The book of Revelations hints at the landscape of heaven, so I like to imagine him still painting, this time, things beyond human comprehension. 😊
Perhaps, like me, you sometimes wonder what heaven is actually like, but no matter what we may hope or dream up, our imaginations are so conditioned by life on earth, that even the wildest guess is probably nowhere near the truth, “…No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him…”
But what requires no imagination whatsoever – irrefutable, historical fact – is that our Lord Jesus left the incredible splendors of heaven in an act of divine love so great, that it changed our world forever, because “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son…” It even changed the way we see history, marking our calendar BC (before Christ) and AD (the year of our Lord), so it’s no wonder the anti-Christ spirit in this old world now loudly refers to BCE (before the common era) and CE (common era). But what they cannot change is that the birth of Christ still is the pivot around which earthly dates are negotiated. He came, he lived, he died, and he rose again. These eternal truths drive our preaching of the Gospel, and they change every person who believes them!
These days, I find I have a growing resistance to the commercialized trappings of Christmas. If I could, I would designate another day for the trees and gifts, the cheerful ditties and glittering decorations, so part of modern tradition, and give it some other appropriate name. I want to place a (large) nativity scene in my garden where every passerby can see it, and I want the only light to be a large, bright star over the babe in the manger, a reminder that “…God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light because their deeds were evil…”
Perhaps my imagination is running wild again😊. So – meanwhile, let me (loudly) “Go tell it on the mountains that Jesus Christ is born.” Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!
