Ever since the Fall of humanity into sin our perspective has been skewed. The Fall was a deathly move towards the lie that I am in charge of my own life. So what happens? Even when God’s Spirit convicts us with our sin, we still have a default tendency to think that we need to do something to sort ourselves out.

Christmas challenges our “what-must-we-do” assumption. The shepherds didn’t come to worship a package of instructions. The wise men did not bring gifts to lay before a telegram from heaven. Herod did not feel threatened by an owners manual from on high. No. Christmas is about a person. It is about God’s Son being birthed into our world. Somehow, God’s solution to the sin problem was not to instruct us, but to come to us, to live with us, to die for us, and to invite us to trust Him. If He would go so far, surely we should trust? And surely we must eventually stop trying to sort ourselves!

Christmas says what matters is not What? but Who?  The answer? Him.