Your Christmas is too small. And by that, I do not mean your tree is too short, you don’t have enough lights outside, or your gifts are not expensive. Your Christmas is too small if it leaves Jesus in the manger, or on the Cross, – or even rising from the tomb and ascending to Heaven.
If your “Silent Night” does not give way to “Resounding Day,” then your Christmas is too small. No amount of presents, perfectly placed wreaths, wonderfully decorated cookies, delightful parties, or time-tested traditions can erase the ultimate letdown you will feel when your Christmas is too small and your “Silent Night” does not point you to the greater “Resounding Day.”
See Christmas through to its infinitely, far-reaching end. Let the star of Bethlehem over the tiny manger remind you of how stars, moon, and sun will be eclipsed one day by the light of Christ’s all-consuming glory. He who lay under a star in the prickly hay of a feeding trough will soon outshine every heavenly body He has made! (Revelation 21:23)
Let the fact that He could find no place in the inn at birth (Luke 2:7), and that He had no place to lay his head in life (Luke 9:38), remind you that He is returning to this universe to take over all places. . . . And prepare them perfectly for you! (Romans 8:21, Revelation 21:1-4, John 14:2-3)
Precisely because Jesus walked this broken earth, we can walk the restored earth soon. He came to the real world in order to bring real hope for a new, real world. Though the best of Christmas seasons come and go in this life, we will enter an eternal season of unending joy and activity – never to be bothered again by the stinging pain of sin as it currently invades every facet of living.
Your Christmas is too small unless you connect the message of the angel Gabriel two millennia ago to the future message of the nameless, seventh angel and many loud voices:
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FIRST CHRISTMAS: “And [Gabriel] said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus'” (Luke 1:30-31, ESV).
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FINAL, ETERNAL ADVENT: “Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, ‘The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever'” (Revelation 11:15, ESV).
When Christmas seems too small, remember a line from the third stanza of “Silent Night”: “Radiant beams from thy holy face with the dawn of redeeming grace . . .” Christmas is only the beginning – the dawn of the new Day.
Silent night of long ago will give way to the resounding day of yet-to-come when the humble Jesus of the manger re-enters the world as the mighty Christ of the universe. The story goes from obscure birth without fanfare to angelic trumpets and loud voices proclaiming the inversion of a godless world into the glorious kingdom of God. He who served us with His birth and death will finally rule us with His life!