A Tender Christmas

Tenderness. Do you sometimes wish you could get a scoop of it from your kitchen and, like pixy dust, sprinkle it on everyone in your family, being sure not to miss your own head, and magically, all the selfish indifferences oozing out would turn into fountains of tenderness?  Too bad it’s not that easy to transform the atmosphere that can sometimes creep into our homes, especially during the Christmas season. The kind of tenderness I am referring to is the natural, emotional, and physical overflow of one person’s heart of love reaching out to another. To define it would encompass every word you can think of that would describe the sweetest of relationships.  You have heard it in the gentle whispers of a nursing mother, or seen it in the loving embrace of a boy and his puppy, or observed it in the tender gaze of a groom for his bride.

I don’t have pixy dust in my kitchen cabinet but God has given us three physical tools that act as conduits through which a full array of emotions flow: our lips, our hands and our eyes.  The powerful messages communicated through our tone of voice, our touch, the look in our eyes will always speak much louder than what we actually say and do and many times will reveal the true colors of the heart. The most beautiful of all tender expressions flows from hearts that are completely emptied of self and full of the life of Christ. Consider giving the gift of tenderness to your family this Christmas. With just a little imagination let’s see and experience the tenderness that must have flooded the atmosphere in Bethlehem at the scene of the birth of Jesus Christ.

The angels’ announcement to the lowly shepherds of “a Savoir who is Christ the Lord” must have been astounding, to say the least. On their journey to find the holy child they must have wondered and discussed with one another what they could possibly say upon arriving and, for the first time, stepping into the presence of the  promised Messiah.  When it comes to expressing ourselves with words, sometimes there is a fine line between speechlessness and tenderness as I’m sure was the case with the shepherds in that moment when they slowly and quietly crept up to the place where Jesus lay.  As they may have been speechless at first, I can imagine that tender expressions of worship and exclamations surely must have fallen freely from their lips.  Oh, the wonder of that holy night and the reverent and tender voices that lifted praises to Emmanuel, God with us.

Then there was Joseph the carpenter. The same rough worn hands that used the ax, saw, and chisel to fashion yokes and plows lovingly and tenderly made preparations for transporting his very pregnant wife seventy miles to a safe and comfortable place for her to give birth.  I can imagine Joseph’s strong arms lowering Mary to the bed he had prepared for her and tenderly holding her face in his hands, assuring her with words of comfort.  The wonder and awe Joseph must have felt when he first reached out to take the holy infant in his hands for the first time must have demanded of him a tenderness that he never even knew existed until that moment.

The pain of her labor was over.  Oh, the tender expression of love and adoration in that instant when, for the first time, Mary’s eyes fell on the Son of God; artists’ renderings have never quite measured up.  She loved Him as her own and worshiped Him as her King.  The words she exclaimed during her visit with Elizabeth must have come flooding back to her memory, “My soul exalts the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior!”.  I can imagine the hushed silence of that moment as Joseph, the angels, and any who may have attended the birth stood gazing in the awe and wonder of witnessing the graces of God touching earth. Don’t you wish you could have been there?!

Let the tender love of the Savior take up residence in your own heart…………………and bring it home.

 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” John 3:16