Sweet Victory

I spent a significant part of my day typing out the lyrics to Christmas music.  Our church’s Christmas musical is coming up, and as I am married to the Worship Leader and I also happen to have remarkable typing skills (eat your heart out, people), I was gifted the job of entering all of the lyrics into the computer.  Many of the songs we’ll be singing are favorite old Christmas hymns, and as I went through them all, I noticed something.

I have been singing these songs for years without really listening to the words.

I have the lyrics memorized, yet I have never stopped to consider what the songs are actually saying.  Of course, the songs are about Jesus. They’re about the baby in the manger.  They’re about Mary and Joseph, the star, the shepherds, the wise men, the angels!  Any child can tell you as much.  But, what I saw today was something a little different.

As I typed and typed and half listened to Sawyer and paused to get Emerald out of crazy predicaments and talked on the phone and cleaned up the kitchen and ate lunch and typed some more, the Holy Spirit began to show me how I should fit into that special night, the one we sing about.  The night of Jesus’ birth.

Consider these words:

“O, come all ye faithful, joyful, and triumphant. Come ye, O come ye, to Bethlehem.  Come and behold Him, born the King of angels!”

I read those words and it was as if I saw them for the first time.  Come, all you who are faithful, joyful, and triumphant?  Is that me?  Do I approach the manger with faith, with real, true joy and a sense of triumph?  I have to admit that I have never looked at Jesus’ birth as a moment of triumph.

But, in that moment, death was already conquered.  We were saved.  He was here.  Finally.

Emmanuel, God With Us.

I want to live my life like this: faithful, joyful, and triumphant.

He did everything.  The hard stuff.  The impossible.  Surely I can manage to live a life of joy and triumph.  Because His triumph is mine.  His victory belongs to me.  His shining moment under the light of the star on that night was also my shining moment.  And His resurrection from a dark and terrible grave years later was also my resurrection.

Something tells me as you’re reading this you’re thinking, “Well, DUH!”  I know.  I can be a little slow.

But, I’m really glad that in the midst of the somewhat chaotic experience of this day, the Holy Spirit still graced me with a “God is so amazing” moment.  Join me in entering into this Christmas season triumphantly!  He came!  He saved!  Let’s keep the faith, live with joy, and relish the triumph!