Just which Christmas is it beginning to look like?

We live in a world of contrasts. Just this past Sunday, within the span of a few brief moments, one of those contrasts drove me to tears.

Our senior pastor, Skip Williams, was delivering a fine example of an Advent sermon. During the sermon, he told the obligatory story of Christmas morning - children, gathered around the tree, looking at the piles of presents, drooling and squealing with the anticipation of tearing through them. His encouragement was to pause, and to read the Christmas story in Luke's gospel, and to pray. Wise advice, indeed.

A few minutes later in the service, as is the custom at our church, some of our members performed a "modern nativity", replacing the angel in the Christmas story with a Wake Med Life-flight nurse, shepherds with a wounded vet and a fireman, wise men with a business man and a doctor. And Mary and Joseph were recently homeless from the foreclosure crisis, living out of a suitcase with their very much alive (and very cute) baby "Jesus".

This year, Christmas won't be easy for my family. We really haven't been able to put away much for presents or Christmas travel, and in all seriousness, for the first time in my life, I'm not sure where the money for Christmas presents is going to come from.

That meant that I was a blubbering mess in church last Sunday; I was moved to tears. I'm a paycheck away from being 'that family'. I stand at a distance, almost from outside the windows, gazing at families with mountains of perfect gifts piled under the tree. I tremble at the thought that somehow I won't be able to provide the best Christmas ever. When the overwhelming voice of our culture screams "Make your kids happy by having lots of gifts under the tree", while the overwhelming Christian culture overwhelmingly screams, "In your perfectly decorated house, make sure you have a beautiful austere manger scene displayed", in the midst of the din the silent night, the lonely cold cave, the unwed mother, the uncomfortable newborn, the temporarily homeless parents, the poor shepherds, are so easily drowned out. It becomes, for those who find themselves outside the reach of the cozy hearths, a question of faith: just who is God with, anyway? With the 'us' that devours it's presents, or with the 'us' that stares longlingly from the outside in, taking only warm comfort in the assurance that God might have come to be even with us? A study in contrasts, indeed.