A few days ago I was trying to explain why I like reading so much, and why I’d always choose to curl up with a good book over watching a film, or TV show.
I worked out that, for me, reading is important, because it gives my imagination an outlet. The problem with film and TV is that it’s all done for you, text is interpreted by a director, and then you watch how they imagine something to look.
If a story contains a description of a place, I want to picture it myself, conjure the images myself, savour the colours and intricacies that are peculiar to my interpretation. Only then do I feel as if I am fully engaged with the story. Only this way am I able to get totally lost in a scene, absorbed in the mental picture I create.
I was thinking yesterday, about how this relates to my interaction and engagement with the Christmas story. This is my 25th advent, I’ve probably heard the story countless times, often it feels like a scene I am watching on the television, only half-concentrating because the work is all done for me. I have seen the nativity scene presented hundreds of times, read it probably thousands. It’s like one of those famous soap episodes that has been repeated over and over again.
Yesterday in church, we sang ‘Oh Little Town of Bethlehem’, which again, I’ve sang countless times. This time, however, I was really struck by a line in the last verse:
“Be born in us today.”
I know this refers to a lot of theological stuff about incarnation, and Jesus living through us today etc, but for me yesterday it reminded me of something else.
Christmas was about Jesus being born into the world once, and this has eternal connotations for all of us, and for history after that point (and before it too, I guess). This can’t be as far as it goes however.
If I can find a way to engage with the Christmas story afresh, to connect with God today through those well-rehearsed phrases, that means that something of Jesus, something of that incarnation, is being born in me today. I will begin to grasp that the gift has relevance and impact on the life I am living in 21st century London.
This year, I want to make the effort to approach the story as if I am reading words on a page, words I may have read before, but that I cannot help but create into lavish and colourful scenes in my mind. I want to try to avoid the sense of detachment, as if the story is just some kitcsh old film that is repeated every Christmas, with the sole purpose of providing background noise while everyone dozes off after dinner.
Surely God becoming man, vulnerable, dirty and inconsolable deserves this much.
