The Often Overlooked Christmas Message: Each Other

​The Nativity story fascinates the hell out of me.

Literally.

The Nativity scene, even more than the scenes at the cross and the empty tomb, is the foundation of my faith in Jesus. The more I reflect on the baby in a manger, the more I can not escape my personal truth: that baby came to deliver us all an inescapable message:

We must live in loving relationships with one another. Without them, we will surely die.

This Jesus, to my knowledge, is the only God story among all God stories out there, the only one amongst all the religions and theologies and doctrines, where the God decided to enter the scene of our own humanity in humanity's most vulnerable state.

A Baby.

As human babies, we were once all clinging to life. Lives we would have surely lost if another human didn't come to our rescue. Our lives all began with someone saving them.

And so, it's important to recognize, this baby Jesus came into the world, fully human, looking into the eyes of his Mother Mary, fully depending on her to save his life.

The creator of the universe could have waltzed into the world a larger than humanity father-figure in charge of it all, yet instead, CHOSE to arrive as a baby totally depending on someone else to take charge.

God CHOSE to be dependent and not depended upon?

Why?

Oh, how many times I have asked that question. Why?

More than ever, though, I feel like I know that answer.

I am a man, a human, who has faced and created many human sufferings in my life. If I had to name the greatest of those sufferings, I would say today that it's having lived a life with very limited meaningful human connections.

Meaningful, being those safe connections where one can be fully themselves, fully exposed and fully weak and fully vulnerable, yet miraculously strengthened by the other. The other, about which one might say, "without this relationship, I am less than."

Yet, the God of power, the God of strength, the God of everything, chose to make it a point, maybe the greatest point of all, that THAT IS the nature of humanity, and the nature of God, that we are all living in dependence on one another.

We are all living in dependence on one another to feel safe, and connected, and provided for. And the order of that is important.

It is not just important, it is divine.

Yes, the God of the universe was born a baby in a manger. But that baby was surrounded first and foremost by humans, not angels, who prioritized making that baby feel safe.

And then, in that safety, our God began to feel connected.

And provided for.

I suspect some might read this and accuse me of trivializing an all-powerful God. And I would say, oh, quite the opposite. I am recognizing and pointing to a God who used his power in the most humbling of ways to deliver us all a message.

That in a world that more and more trivializes human connection, reduces it to 'likes' and 'loves' and 'views' and superficiality and casualness - we are creating the world's greatest suffering.

Disconnection.

Loneliness.

The baby Jesus, who would later in life proclaim that the greatest commandments are to love God and to love one another, chose to arrive into this world as the very definition of that love.

Safety. Connection. Provision. In that order....

The manger scene is not cute. It's not adorable. It's not a beautiful beginning to a beautiful story.

It is a warning. One timely and one worth listening to.

The Creator of the universe could have chosen an arrival that declared, never fear, God is here. And yet he chose to arrive with the message, never fear, for we have each other.

The most powerful God came offering the most powerful message of them all.

Each other.

The often-overlooked message in the nativity scene.

Each other.