Perhaps you’ve heard of the great thermostat wars…the battle each household must fight over who controls the temperature of the house. We fight that one in our house, but we have an additional battle– the Christmas lights fight. I love Christmas decorations. I go all out. I have lights all over our house, and not just on trees. (Yes, trees plural.) I have lights on the mantle, on the entertainment center, around the nativity scene, and hanging over entry ways. My husband is convinced it will raise our electric bill or start a fire, and thus he goes around unplugging my lights. Then I call him “Scrooge” and plug them back in!
It takes me several days to get the decorations out of the basement storage room and to prepare our house for the Christmas season. Many of us will spend the entire month of December trimming the tree, shopping, wrapping gifts, making cookies, attending parties, or engaging in a variety of other seasonal activities, all in preparation for December 25th. We’ll likely sing all manner of Christmas songs, from Jingle Bells to Silent Night and Joy to the World. “Let every heart prepare Him room…and Heaven and nature sing.” I was singing that in my head a few days ago and suddenly it hit me–while we’re making preparations for Christmas, are we preparing room for Christ in our hearts? In the busyness of the season, do we even remember that Christmas is really about Christ? That seems like a trivial question with an obvious answer. “Yes,” you might say, “of course I know Jesus is the reason for the season. And if I didn’t know, it’s printed on ornaments, Christmas cards, and wrapping paper.” But when we look at our schedules, do they reflect hearts that are busy preparing for Christ?
Luke 2:3-7 says, “And everyone was on his way to register for the census, each to his own city. Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, in order to register along with Mary, who was engaged to him, and was with child. While they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”
Jesus was born in a stable and laid in a feeding trough because there was no room for Him in the inn, which probably means there wasn’t room for him anywhere else either. No room for the King and Savior of the world. We read that and think, “How terrible! How could that be?” And yet, aren’t we doing the same thing? Aren’t we too relegating the King to a tiny corner of the holiday, shoving Him to the outskirts of our busy schedules? We’ll squeeze in a Christmas Eve church service. We might display a nativity in our home. That’s after we watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” for the 39th time and after we get all our holiday parties out of the way. That’s why I like observing the season of Advent. Advent means “coming” in Latin, and it’s the time on the church calendar in which Christians are waiting and preparing for both the celebration of Jesus’s birth at Christmas and the return of Christ at the Second Coming. It’s a time in which every heart should be preparing Him room.
What that looks like for each of us will be slightly different. We might purpose to spend more time in prayer and in the Word each day. We might take the time to pray for each person to whom we send a card or gift, petitioning the Lord either for their salvation or for them to grow in the faith. Perhaps we will take some friends to a nursing home to go Christmas caroling, stopping to pray with residents along the way. In my case, I will let the music and words of Handel’s Messiah (which are straight from scripture) soak into my heart at every rehearsal, and I will make the performance a private worship service between me and the Lord. “Behold the Lamb of God…who taketh away the sin of the world…and hath redeemed us to God by His blood.”
Let every heart prepare Him room.
