A Truly Immeasurable Blessing

Have you ever scrolled down your own Instagram feed and found a post you are embarrassed to have found, yet happy to have found because it evidences a tangible change in your character over time? I found such a post a while back—it was a post I made on Christmas day a few years ago. It was a picture of my many gifts arranged nicely on the floor, meticulously messily (that’s the Pinterest way)—some scented candles, a purse, some M&Ms, a novel. And it was accompanied by my hilariously sad caption: “Immeasurably blessed”. I think (and hope) I deleted the post when I saw it, or at least changed the caption to something more becoming of a Christian who professes to truly celebrate Christmas. I realise now, to great relief, that I certainly wasn’t wrong about Christmas being an occasion of “immeasurable blessing”. By labelling my Christmas presents an “immeasurable blessing” I was short-changing myself. I did not realise that properly recognising the “immeasurable blessing” would cosmically escalate my Christmas celebrations to glorious and inexpressible joy. 

Jesus

The Nativity scene may be emblazoned in your mind—on the front of cards, portrayed in Sunday School, maybe hung in your grandma’s living room. Like the Mona Lisa, familiarity has produced a false perception of knowledge: You think you know it, but you don’t. You’ve seen it, but really you haven’t. At least, though, if the Nativity scene is familiar to you, you know that Jesus is meant to be the centre of Christmas. It commemorates the birth of Jesus to the Virgin Mary in a manger, in a stable, in Bethlehem, Judea.

Who is this Jesus, why was He born, and why is His the most celebrated birthday of all time? He is the Son of God: Because God is a Trinitarian God, Jesus is really God Himself—the logos, the Word of God, who spoke the world into being and actively sustains the Universe—was born as a baby. His birth was foretold for centuries before: Just read Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah for tasters (though they’re really full feasts themselves). A star in the night sky shone to signal His birth and guided wisemen from the Far East to worship Him. Angels appeared to shepherds in the fields to announce the birth and sing glorious praise. This was a big deal: a historical watershed. Throughout His life, Jesus performed miracles, healing lepers, opening blind eyes, commanding demons to come out of the possessed, and even resurrecting the dead. Most significant of all, 3 days after his execution on a Roman cross, He rose from the dead and appeared, in a supernatural body, to witnesses, and later ascended to heaven after the parting words “Go and make disciples of all nations”.  

Blessing

Jesus’ birth is celebrated because no maleficent God would do such a thing. It’s not a King stepping down to the people and associating with paupers; it is the Creator stepping down into His own creation, an author stepping into his book, an artist painting himself into the picture. Analogies are unhelpful when explaining God, though: What is needed is to properly reflect on the fact that the God of the Universe assumed the form of a man, born in a stable with no room in an Inn—He actually bothered with this sinful people. And what was the point? If in the Old Testament He already showed Himself powerful and personal, e.g. through Covenanting with Abraham, giving the law to Moses, delivering the Israelites—what’s the point of being born as a man? Think back to the Gospel. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! He redeems us from our lowly position and gives us direct access to God. In Christ we see that God actually bothered, and not just that, but He gave Himself for us.

“The King of Kings lay thus in lowly manger … Behold your King! Before Him lowly bend!” (O Holy Night)

Actually immeasurable…  

God is unfathomable. He breaks our scales, transcends our measurements, unable to be contained in a manmade philosophical box. That Person embraced limitations, went from an infinity we can hardly imagine, to the human finitude we’ve always known. And not only that, but embraced the destiny of going to the depths of hell on our behalf, facing the lashes of a Holy God against sin, a destiny we will now never know! All this means: the Christmas blessing is outside the dimensions that bind and contain our very faculties of understanding. It is, actually, immeasurable. It is not a figure of speech—it is probably one of the only occasions you’d use the word “immeasurable” literally! Even the huuuugest box of M&Ms for Christmas is measurable. The box is reducible to centimetres; the M&Ms are reducible to number and calories; even the thought of the giver is reducible to simply the festive care of a loved one. But the gift of God to us? Infinitely different.

Indeed, angels long to look into these things! A speaker I heard once highlighted—To the angels it makes no sense. It is a mystery. The God that they too worship, stepped down and even died and went to the fallen hell, for the sake of those creatures they call humans. The angels were compelled that Christmas night to sing praises to God, for they witnessed a blessing truly immeasurable.

My dear friends gave me good gifts that Christmas when I wrote that shallow caption, but those were pathetic things. If it were even possible to lay those gifts side by side with the immeasurable gift of Immanuel, they would look pathetic. If that’s what I—and probably many of us—might hyperbolically call an “immeasurable blessing”, imagine receiving a literally immeasurable blessing. That’s the heart of Christmas.