Chaotic Christmas

http://christian-backgrounds.com/christian-wallpapers-backgrounds/desktop-wallpapers/picture/christmas/568-jesus-birth-and-the-star

Every week at church, I lead a kindergarten small group. For the last few weeks, we have been doing various Christmas crafts during the small group time. Last Sunday, one of the activities was to cut out all of the different characters from the nativity- the shepherds, the wise men, Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, the animals, the angel- and glue them all to a picture of an empty stable on a sheet of paper. But there was an issue with the craft; the stable was WAY too small for all of those little paper characters! The kids in my small group had a difficult time fitting all of the little shepherds and magi and other people into the picture. But, many of them somehow managed to squeeze them all as neatly as possible onto the paper with Joseph and Mary and the baby in the center with the shepherds, animals, and wise men surrounding them. However, one little girl didn't even try to arrange the people in the typical manger scene way. In fact, she didn't even put baby Jesus on the ground of the stable, she glued him floating in the air in the middle of the paper! Then, she put all of the other little characters in a big, unorganized blob-like formation around him. At first, this really bothered me. Then, it occurred to me how well this depicted the Christmas story. While most people picture the nativity scene as a serene picture of rustic shepherds with their cute, fluffy sheep, a sweet, adoring Mary, and a holy baby wrapped in clean, white cloths with a little ring of light around his head, I don't believe that the actual event was like this at all. I mean seriously, the baby was born in a STABLE, probably surrounded by dirty, smelly animals and soiled hay and cow manure. That's the opposite of serene. I kind of wonder if the stable was more like this picture...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2007/1510680324_0d799c6279.jpg

But yet, as crazy as it may have seemed, as chaotic as the strange circumstances surrounding the story may have appeared, there was still something greater. In the midst of the nativity story, I'll bet that Mary and Joseph wondered why they had to stay in a stable, why they had to put their newborn son in a dirty, nasty manger. But even when it seemed all chaotic and unorganized, everything added to a bigger picture. Each character, each circumstance, was all about God's plan to save the world. So in the end, it didn't matter that everything wasn't serene and perfect and Hallmark card worthy, because God had something better than that. He had a greater plan. So even when circumstances seem so meaningless and trials make us feel like God doesn't care about us, we can look at the Christmas story and realize that there is something bigger at work in our lives. This reminds me of the lyrics of one of my favorite songs.
"All this pain
I wonder if I’ll ever find my way
I wonder if my life could really change at all
All this earth
Could all that is lost ever be found
Could a garden come up from this ground at all
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us
All around
Hope is springing up from this old ground
Out of chaos life is being found in You."
- Beautiful Things by The Michael Gungor Band

So despite chaos and seemingly useless pain, God makes beautiful things out of dust.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
<3 Clara