I really like Christmas.
I am not one to decorate our house from ceiling to floor, inside and out. Heck, I haven't even made one Christmas cookie this year, but I still really like Christmas. The story of God becoming man, choosing and determining to wrap Himself in infant fraility thrills me to my core. Having a nativity set for Christmas seems so important to me. I want to look at it and remember what happened that day, and the implications it has for me in my everyday and ordinary life.
So, every year at Christmas time, I clean everything off of our entertainment center and put up our nativity. We don't have a mantle to display it on, and coffee tables are out of the question for the obvious reason that there are 3 children ages 5 and under living here. I love unwrapping every wiseman, shepherd, camel, and donkey and placing it carefully in position, and it only seems fitting that the simplicity of the nativity shouldn't have to compete with anything else. It should be the focal point, the attention-getter.
But, you know, the top of the entertainment center is such a convenient place to put things. It's close to the front door and high enough that the kids can't reach anything on it. Before you know it, life is crowding out my simple, beautiful nativity scene. This month's water bill, car keys, a movie we rented, a manual for Asia's new birthday bike, and on occasion, Trina's socks encroach on the sacred space meant only for Baby Jesus. In a matter of days, my Christmas scene becomes very...cluttered.
So many things are vying for our attention during the holidays. So many everyday life responsibilities threaten to make us forget the importance of our Emmanuel reaching through time to be with us. We have trouble keeping things in their proper place. The insignificant and temporal often overshadow the eternal and lasting.
Will you excuse me? I think I have some cleaning to do...
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Ah! Nicely done. :)
ReplyDeleteWe actually had no place to put up our Nativity this year, can you believe it? Pooh.
I thought about squeezing it on the top of the piano, but before I could, Natalie started playing with the decorations I had already set there, and so I decided against it. BUT ... Little People makes a nativity set that the girls are getting for Christmas this year (Shhh!) and I am SOOO excited because a) doesn't every kid want to play with the nativity and b) maybe, just maybe, I can set my nativity on the piano next year and it can remain undisturbed!
Heidi I didn't read this until after Christmas (my life was to busy:-) but thank you so much for reminding me just how easy it is to clutter our lives, not only on Christmas, but every day! Life is busy, partly because is just has to be, and partly because we make it so. Somehow, much too often, the One who is the most important gets pushed behind the many things that really aren't that important. I think I need to go clean too........
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