On Christmas And Having Christ Within...

Every year she’s there. You can’t miss her, she is just off center, a look of love and adoration on her face. She has a robe on, and for some reason it is almost always blue. Her hair is covered, with a strand or two escaping the folds, long, often dark, sometimes blond, maybe red, a slight wave.

She is the mother of Jesus, and once a year we honor her, we give her a place in a manger scene, we dress up a little girl in a bathrobe and give her a plastic baby doll and let her walk on stage. Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mary, the one the angel called “blessed.”

A lot of Christians don’t know what to do with Mary. Many things have been said about her through the centuries, and a good number of those have no basis in Scripture. Some even reflect a gross misunderstanding of Jesus. Bottom line, nobody knows us like Jesus, and a mother’s love is a distant second to the love of the Savior.

Still, Mary was in on things from the beginning. She received the angel’s greeting, and she pondered what it meant to have the Lord with her. If she has anything to teach us, it is in her response. Listen to her words in Luke 1:38, “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.” What a contrast that is to other Biblical characters. When Abraham heard God’s promise, he didn’t know how to respond. Sarah responded with laughter. Zechariah asked for proof. But Mary simply responds with belief, a belief wrapped up in obedience. That should be our response as well.

We speak of having Jesus within us as Christ followers. Paul gives us a basis for that when he says in Galatians 2:20, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” Max Lucado says that we must not miss out on the reason we are placed on this earth, to be so pregnant with heaven’s child that He lives through us. I really like that image – so pregnant with heaven’s child that He lives through us. What would that be like for us to have Christ within? Lucado writes these reflections in his book, Next Door Savior:

To have my voice, but him speaking.
My steps, but Christ leading.
My heart, but his love beating
in me, through me, with me.
What’s it like to have Christ on the inside?

To tap his strength when mine expires
or feel the force of heaven’s fires
raging, purging wrong desires.
Could Christ become my self entire?

So much him, so little me
that in my eyes it’s him they see.
What’s it like to a Mary be?
No longer I, but Christ in me.

And it all begins as we give God Mary’s response, “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said." May that response be our Christmas gift to God this year.