All God Wants for Christmas Is You
At the very center of each of us is a longing for union with God.
There is within every human heart a restlessness that cannot be explained and cannot be alleviated by anything material. There is nothing in this world that can calm the restless heart that beats within our deepest, innermost self.
St. Augustine wrote in the very first paragraph of his Confessions:
O Lord, you made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.
The only salve for the weary soul. The only calm that this restless heart can find. The only peace—the only true peace—that we will ever know is the peace that comes from the presence of God.
You know this restlessness. That nagging thing in the back of your mind. I wonder why I can't quite feel settled. I wonder why I'm never quite completely satisfied. We try to fill it with accomplishments, acquisitions, relationships, experiences. And still it persists.
The reason is that we need the presence of God. We were made for it.
God's Answer to Our Need
At Christmas, we celebrate that God, knowing our need, understanding the restlessness that exists within each of us because we have been separated from God's presence, makes God's self present alongside us in the most intimate way possible.
God becomes one of us.
God, our God, has experienced all of the emotions, all of the trauma, all of the joy, all of the pain, all of the excitement, and all of the disappointment that comes along with being human. There is nothing about the human condition that God has not experienced in the person of Jesus Christ.
And because God has experienced what we experience, God has redeemed every last particle, every last moment, every last intricate detail of the human experience.
The writer to the Hebrews puts it this way: "The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact expression of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word." God in Jesus Christ represents the fullest self-expression of God while also representing God's deepest desire for every human being.
God wants you.
All God wants for Christmas is you. (With apologies to Mariah Carey. Actually, I'm not sorry.)
What Christmas teaches us, what Christmas invites us into, is this new reality that God has inaugurated through Jesus. A reality where we are no longer separated from God but are invited into the divine life. Where we no longer have to settle for the restlessness that plagues us throughout most of our days.
God wants to give us the gift of God's presence. God wants it so deeply that God united our nature to his in the person of Jesus Christ. By uniting our nature to his nature, God has invited us eternally into the rest of his divine love.
That is the only true rest we can experience.
The Great Exchange
Our hearts are restless until they find rest in God. And God, knowing our need—understanding that we on our own could never make our way back into that kind of relationship with God that brings true peace and true love and true harmony—has never stopped reaching across the divide to pull us close.
Even though we have separated ourselves from God, God refuses to remain separated from us.
And so God in Jesus Christ becomes not just like us. He becomes what we are so that we might become what he is.
This is the joy of Christmas.
This is the peace of Christmas.
This is the hope of Christmas.
Because Christmas is about the divine love that embraces each of us and pulls us close to the heart of God.
For in the heart of God, our restless hearts are home.