It’s Christmas Day. I’ve already blogged about questions such as ‘Was Jesus really born on December 25?’ and ‘How does Santa fit into all this?’ (You can read that post here).
And yes, we know it’s Jesus birthday.
But can we go deeper than candles and nostalgia?
I recently read that the average Canadian spends $1500 extra on Christmas each year. Gifts, travelling, entertaining. Navigating the malls in the evenings seems like a contact sport; schools put on photo-op concerts; and society-at-large gets gussied up for such merriment that it leaves your head spinning.
Now, all of that actually does sound like preparing for a birthday party.
But for Jesus? Not really.
To tell you what I mean let me recount a story told by Stephen Seamands:
George Harley was a pioneer missionary who founded the Ganta Mission in 1926 in Liberia, West Africa. He was well trained—and with the help of the locals they cut their way through to the interior and built huts, a medical dispensary, a chapel and a home.
The mission was established in Africa’s heart, and several years later one of the best hospitals in Liberia was built there. It still survives today and is being rebuilt after the 2003 civil war.
Dr. Harley’s reputation spread. Sick people were pouring in. In time he would treat 10,000 people a year. But even though they were receiving so much medical help, the Mano people were not receiving well the message about Jesus.
But after 5 years something happened—a breakthrough.
A few years previous the Harley’s had a child, a baby boy whom they named Robert—or, as they called him, “Bobby.” Of him they said, “He was the apple of our eye. How we loved our little boy!”
But when he was almost five, Dr. Harley was looking out the window of the medical dispensary and saw Bobby fall down in a field. He got up and fell again. It kept happening. Dr. Harley ran out and picked him up to find him very feverish.
“Bobby, don’t worry. Your daddy knows how to treat that tropical fever. He’s going to help you get better.” Dr. Harley did everything he could but the fever continued to rage. He was confident, but scared.
The next morning, Bobby died.
Here is how Dr. Harley tells what happened next:
“I went down to the wood shop and made a little coffin, and we laid Bobby in it. After I had nailed on the lid, I lifted the coffin and put it on my shoulders and started down to the clearing to find a spot where I could bury my son. To get there I had to go near the village. When one of the old men in the village saw me he said, ‘What are you doing? Where are you going with that box?’ ‘My son has died,’ I told him, ‘I’m going to bury him.’ And the old man said, ‘Here, let me help you.’
The Harley’s had lived there for five years and no one had ever come to chapel. Dr. Harley led services every Sunday to only himself, his wife and Bobby. The locals were interested in the healing of medicine, but not the healing of a Messiah. To them, Christianity was a far-away religion. It was for “white man”—but not for them.
Harley’s story continues: He went down to bury his son, and the emotion overcame him. He fell to his knees and sobbed uncontrollably. His beloved son had died, and he was burying him in the African jungle 8,000 miles from the rest of his friends and family.
But when he started crying, the old man from the village who was helping him became amazed. He looked closely at the doctor who was crying. Suddenly, he jumped up and ran to the village yelling loudly to everyone over and over, ‘White man, white man—he cries like one of us!’
That night, the Harley’s were near ruin, and wondered if they should pack up and leave.
But then there was a knock on the door. And there stood the chief along with almost every man, woman and child from the village. The next Sunday, they were back; the chapel was full. There were so many people that they were pressed upon the windows from the outside looking in. They wanted to learn more about this Jesus who was near and dear to their doctor’s heart.
What happened? The Mano people learned in a real down-to-earth way that the doctor was like them. And so, they could trust him.
He was like them. So they could trust him.
That’s what God did at Christmas.
By being born as one of us, Jesus is like us.
And so, we can trust him.
The Doctor cried “like one of us.”
Well, Jesus cried like one of us (John 11:35).
He got angry like one of us (Mark 1:41).
He got hungry like one of us (Mark 11:12).
He had friends like one of us (John 15:13).
He mourned like one of us (John 11:35).
He liked to have a good time like one of us (John 2:10).
And so, we can trust him to show us the Way, The Truth, and the Life.
He is the true Doctor of us all. And at Christmas, we have a party to celebrate that he came to be like one of us, and to heal us.
May your Christmas and 2015 be upheld by his healing hand.
