Don’t be LAZY when it comes to imaginatively immersing yourself in the chronicles of Christmas. Imaginatively inhabit these real-life scenarios – – – > Genesis 3:8-15; Genesis 22:15-17; Isaiah 9:2, 6-7; Isaiah 11:1-4, 6-9; Luke 2:8-16; Matthew 2:1-12; Revelation 12:1-6, 13-17; & John 1:1-14.

Receive and relish what you’ve allowed to become ‘prosaically familiar’ and ‘unimaginatively ordinary’; and realize that it’s not ordinary at all! Force yourself to stare, ponder, and savor how exceedingly strange this familiar story is! See and be mystified at the Christmas story, as you watch God at war with an ancient serpent. Marvel at God deploying division after division of angelic special forces units. Recognize and relish the chronicles of God promising to redemptively invade and impact more people than there are grains of sand on the beach. See the staggering zeal and ambition of God’s promise, and embrace the stunning otherworldliness of a peace that permits nursing infants to play with poisonous snakes as if they were stuffed animals!

Partake of the nativity narrative of God in the flesh as medicine for all the wounds and ailments you have collected throughout your grueling sojourn through darkness; and receive the light and dawning of The King who is intimately acquainted with all your griefs, and who personally knows the temptations you’ve encountered during the days of your depression and distress.

Please please please heed the warning, that this story IS NOT SAFE! It’s like Jumanji! It invariably draws you into the danger of a newly-wed couple, who finds themselves unexpectedly pregnant, with no health insurance, and no doulas or labor and delivery doctors. You’re forced to simply watch as the baby is born in an unsanitary barn. And you have to adjust your lust for social status & “nice stuff” as disreputable shepherds are the first and only visitors, and as you watch Mary scramble to come up with creative solutions for nursery equipment – like repurposing a feeding trough as a crib! You have to swallow your pride, and accept whatever unorthodox help God sends. For example when enigmatic wealthy astrologers offer to finance your emergency flight to a foreign country, because your toddler is viewed as a threat to national security, you must completely reject the notion that you are self-sufficient, and simply accept help like a little child!

The advent story is a true fairy tale, where the Author of life and light joins us in our frailty, limitations, and vulnerability. The Author of our existence comes to give us the right to become children of God; to be born not of blood, nor of the will of flesh nor the will of man, but of God!