A simple shoebox, filled by a loving heart, travels around the world as a Christmas gift to a needy child. To participate in such an enterprise is to see firsthand the meeting of two extremes – great poverty and great love.
Operation Christmas Child, a ministry of Samaritan’s Purse, has been leading the way in this enterprise since 1993. They and volunteers have delivered over 200 million boxes of Christmas cheer to partner churches around the world. The churches give the gifts to needy children along with a powerful message – God loves you.
That is the meeting of extremes with a human touch. But in a more transcendent way, Christmas embeds into the mind another meeting of extremes. G.K. Chesterton calls it “the idea of a baby and the idea of unknown strength that sustains the stars.” The image of mother and child softens the heart and hints at the mercy of God. The presence of angels and the mysterious guiding star proclaim the startling news that something happened once in human history that has eternal implications.
The Christmas story in John’s gospel brings together the immanent and transcendent. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… All things came into being through Him” (1:1,3). The Word is God the Creator. What has this to do with Christmas, with mother and child? John adds, “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (1:14). It is extreme that the Creator entered his creation as a Babe. It had to be so, because the Word is the Savior we need to connect us to God.
The annual Christmas celebration is a reminder of the impact of the historic event. “Omnipotence and impotence, or divinity and infancy, do definitely make a sort of epigram which a million repetitions cannot turn into a platitude,” Chesterton writes. “It is not unreasonable to call it unique. Bethlehem is emphatically a place where extremes meet.” It is the place where the Light shined in the darkness.
When believers step into the space between the love of God and human need, people find hope that need is not the end of their story. When God stepped into the space between the infinite and the finite, we all found hope that we are loved, and not alone. The Christmas story is part of your story when “as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name” (John 1:12).
You may have missed your chance to pack a shoebox this year. Hold that thought. If the Lord tarries, soon it will be Christmas day, once again.