By John Pierce
Where did we get the idea that Christmas should be perfect?
That’s easy to answer: Christmas stories, Christmas songs, Christmas movies, Christmas greeting cards, Martha Stewart.
Often we can end up with the false notion that a proper Christmas should be free of head colds, personality conflicts, late shipping or dry turkey.
Perhaps it is helpful to consider Christmas as just another day — in one sense.
Love, joy, hope and peace are not for a day or even a season. These Christmas gifts are daily pursuits among the challenges and imperfections that mark all of our lives.
Christmas serves its best purpose as a reminder that this holy interruption in human history is not about everything being “just right” for a day. It is the assurance of needed grace and the promise of hope amid the ongoing experiences of daily living.
To expect perfection for a day is to anticipate a lesser gift that is rarely delivered. There is one far greater and more lasting.
“Let us go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened.”
Director of the Jesus Worldview Initiative at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee and former executive editor and publisher at Good Faith Media.