Understanding the Season

The first real snow has fallen, and so to me, the Christmas season is officially here. The weather is colder and it’s that time of year when we go out to warm up the car before we head off into winter days. Of course, we also see the festive lights, the Christmas trees, the wreaths on the street posts of Durham, and the shopping... oh, the shopping. I try to get my shopping for Christmas done all in one-fell swoop - one day out shopping, 8 or 9 hours, and I am usually able to finish up (and then sleep for 14 hours to recover).

Inevitably, one of the messages we hear this season is about the real meaning of Christmas. Moving beyond the materialism and the stress of being crammed into close quarters with relatives we don’t know too well, we see that there is a real and deeper meaning to Christmas. But beyond just knowing that Christmas marks the birth of the Savior, there are some more subtle and profound meanings behind Christmas. For example, Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Jesus was called the Bread of Life. And interestingly enough, Bethlehem can be translated from the Hebrew to mean "a house of bread". So the Bread of Life is born in a house of bread. How about the fact that Jesus was born in a manger, a place where to animals come to drink. So in some sense, the sheep (a name Jesus often uses to describe His followers) come to drink from the Living Water.

Perhaps the most profound message of this season is that of condescension. In Philippians 2: 5-7, we read, "Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness." A friend of mine just asked me this question: If we had someone like Ravi Zacharias or Billy Graham come to UNH to speak, would we have them stay at our apartment? My response was no, and that I’d even be willing to pay the hotel bill myself to have someone of that stature come to UNH. We’d probably never think of having President Hart from UNH come and sleep on the floor in our apartment. And yet that, in my view, is the greatest message of the season. Jesus, who was and is God, took Himself out of Heaven and put Himself into Creation. And not only did He put Himself into Creation, but He did it as an infant born in a manger. He could have come and been like a Caesar, but He came in humility, gentleness, and meekness. The message of Christmas is that God loves us enough to give up Heaven to come and walk and be with us. May we be overwhelmed with such a love this Christmas.

Merry Christmas to everyone here at UNH.

Blessings to you in the coming new year.

- Tim Carpenter, Campus Ministry, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at UNH