for our natures to change

I love Christmas music. Every year I spend some time looking for new songs or different renditions of old songs I enjoy. This year I found a song by Frightened Rabbit, a Scottish independent rock group that I enjoy. It is called, “It’s Christmas So We’ll Stop.” They sing that it is Christmas, so we should stop conflicts and actions of hatred.

“We’re built to give at least once each year
Now that’s better than never I guess
And life might never get better than this
With the perfect excuse for our natures to change”

It’s a fairly common sentiment, I think, that somehow we ought to treat each other better during Christmas, or that we ought to be more generous during Christmas. It is during the Christmas season that we see familiar charities like the Salvation Army collecting for needy families, or “Toys for Tots,” or churches and businesses adopting families for Christmas. The music on the radio tends to be cheerful, and there seems to be an expectation of Christmas cheer. Even when people get grumpy due to the busyness of the season, there is a disappointment, almost as if there is some unspoken agreement to be charitable that has been broken. It’s Christmas so we’ll stop. There is hope in this. Hope that perhaps things do not have to be filled with conflict and bad news. There is hope that perhaps there can be some commonly experienced joy. It is as if we know, almost instinctively, that we were made for something better, yet that we are somehow stuck because of the way humans are. I love the line, “with the perfect excuse for our natures to change.” It’s fascinating to hear something akin to original sin in the music of secular artists. There is something broken in our very nature. Something is broken, but there is also that longing for something better.
Charles Wesley wrote several Christmas hymns, and I have a collection of them titled, “Hymns for the Nativity of Our Lord.” In hymn 5 are these words:

He laid his Glory by, He wrapped Him in our clay,
Unmarked by human eye, the latent Godhead lay;
Infant of Days He here became, and bore the loved Immanuel’s name.
See in that infant’s face, the depths of deity,
And labor while you gaze, to sound the mystery:
In vain ye angels gaze no more, but fall and silently adore.

He deigns in flesh to appear, widest extremes to join,
To bring our vileness near, and make us all divine;
And we the life of God shall know, for God is manifest below.

Charles Wesley explores the mystery that is the Nativity of our Lord, which is the foundation for the celebration we call Christmas. We feel the call to something higher. We long for peace on earth and goodwill towards humankind. But we also are well aware that something is wrong in us. In the nativity we see the mystery of Immanuel, God with us, God the Son taking on human flesh. The hope, however, is quite possibly beyond what we dare to dream. The hope is that in Christ, wildest extremes are joined, and that in Christ the sin problem in humanity can be vanquished. What if our nature really can be changed by God? What if the image of God, the imago dei, in which we were created, can be restored?
On this Christmas Eve, I encourage to you contemplate the mystery that is God with us in Jesus Christ. In Jesus our wildest dreams can come true. We can be forgiven. Our nature can be changed. May the mystery and transformation offered in the Nativity of our Lord Jesus be yours this season.

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