Beginnings

I unwrap my new pajamas, put them on, and proceed to live in them for as many hours as is socially acceptable.  And when I finally have to put on real clothes, I tuck them lovingly under my pillow, saving them for the next night.  They are so incredibly soft!  I dread the day when I will have to wash them, because once they’re washed and dried a few times, they become normal, unremarkable pajamas.  In other words, if Cinderella were a clothing item, she would be Christmas pajamas.

I’ve made my mom some dishcloths, because the ones she has are faded and falling apart.  This is not the first time she’s received such a gift from me, and in all likelihood it will not be the last.  Even something as mundane as a dishcloth loses something with use.

I give my dad a gift certificate to the same store for which I gave him a gift certificate on his birthday, so that he can go back and buy the same thing that he bought then.  Despite my lack of creativity, he seems delighted.  Things break, after all.  And if they don’t break, they get bent or lost.

Then: Yes!  All my hopes and dreams are realized!  New fleece leggings and a shirt with thumbholes in the sleeves.  If I must change out of my pjs, I prefer to slip into something with equally cloud-like softness.  When no one’s looking, I pet my own arm.  I am embarrassingly obsessed with how soft all my new clothes are, but I feel compelled to savor it while it lasts.

So it goes: soft to threadbare, new to old, life to death.

Yet in the midst of a fallen, decaying world, a baby was born.  He was placed in a manger as a newborn- truly new.  God, in the form of an infant, was something this world had never seen and would never see again.  He had come to reverse the order of things, to bring holiness where there was sin and light where there was darkness.

And now, over 2,000 years later, we celebrate!  And we wait for the day when His work will be complete.

So it will be:  confusion to clarity, old to new, death to life.

And so it is, wherever Jesus is king.