Jesus amazes. Just a glance at His character and His Word and His heart unfolding on the New Testament pages of Scripture captivates. It arrests the pride and pretension, the comparison and idolatry of our hearts. His holiness reveals our unholiness, our unworthiness, our un-everything. He utterly undoes us. This undoing is a revealing of who we are without Him, strapped to sin. This undoing allowing us to experience the best receiving of His Son. The eternal God folded His Son into flesh so that He could fold Himself into our hearts. God folds Himself into us and gives grace to we who so often withhold it. He offers the eternal Word of grace in the midst of all our gracelessness. Our tongues betray us. Our hearts, left to themselves, destroy us. Our minds wrecked with all manner of brokenness, but the great author and perfecter of our faith works in us to bring about our salvation…our sanctification.

And the angels took to the sky and made their grace-dripping proclamation…  for you that’s what the preacher said… for you a Savior has been born, a Savior born so that He may be born in us. To live is Christ.

We will gather with family around tables. We will gather with friends chatting at the season’s parties. We will gather with acquaintances & friends on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. And we can pour words of grace, or we can leave hearts strangely aching for the words of comfort they did not receive. The words all of us are in desperate need of, even those who will not dare to admit it.

There’s a lot that accompanies Christmas. Gorgeous dancing lights, halls decked splendidly or longing to. There are  Advent traditions and anticipation. There are tables set and often candles lit. There are presents wrapped beautifully and who doesn’t seek the season’s beautiful feelings and experiences? We all strive toward our own ideals, and we all fall short of them.  And we can receive friends and family, expectations and hopes, struggles and silent brokenness with an overwhelming flood of grace… such grace that is given by God to every Christ lover… or  we really could live as Christ. His living waters rush free and full to every soul willing to receive Him.

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. John 1:12

So let the Word of grace reign this Christmas by offering what He gives. Receive others in all their startling differences this Christmas, so that when you share Jesus for their encouragement or perhaps for their salvation, they might also receive Him.