Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world. (Philippians 2:14-15)
When our kids were little, my wife would help make the Advent season special by letting our kids bake sugar cookies, each on their own special day, and then have another special day when they invited their friends to help decorate their delectable specimens.
Let me say up front that I have a sweet tooth. I like cookies (biscuits for all my UK friends). But I had to swallow hard before I could bring one of these creations anywhere close to my mouth. Our kids—as most kids do, I suppose—liked colors. Green sugary stuff, red sugary stuff, and especially, it seemed to me at least, silver. Silver sugar bells, silver sugar tinsel, you name it, silver sugar. Pile it on—bells, whistles, sugar mistletoe—it didn’t matter. At least that’s how I remember these shiny silver Christmas cookies.
Then one day, years later, reflecting back on those times, the genius of my wife’s creativity dawned on me. Our kids were teenagers before they would ever experience Christmas in their home (North American) culture. But my wife had made a new family culture that was centered around a Jesus-centered celebration.
“These are delicious, sweetie!”
That was not a lie, what I told my kids. It was, perhaps, a culturally adapted, relativistic statement, but it was not a lie.
It was me learning to appreciate my wife’s wisdom in providing an atmosphere of joy, creativity, and outreach into the neighborhood. It was Jesus in action in her life, by helping our kids bake and create.
It is interesting how, in Philippians 2:14-15, the Apostle Paul applies Christmas to a group of new Christians living in a city bristling with its proud, Roman, military muscle (Philippi was a Roman colony, a place where military veterans could own property and live out their retirement away from the capital city—where they and their weapons were not wanted.)
He explains in verses 5 to 11 of that chapter how God saved us. It was by power, the humble kind, not the domineering kind. It was by that kind of power through meekness that God launched His rescue mission for us, taking on all our humanity, dying in our place, and now living, reigning, and providing for His people.
No wonder it was angels—messengers (that’s what the word angelos means) and not the military that God sent—not to help us save ourselves, but rather to announce that He is doing it. It was ‘Good News of great joy for all people everywhere!’ (Luke 2:10).
So we are admonished to live out Christmas where we have been placed, first of all not by arguing, fighting, complaining, and secondly by expressing the joy and creativity of Jesus, or as the prophet Daniel (12:3) puts it, ‘shining like the stars’.
It was by that kind of power through meekness, that God launched His rescue mission for us.