We’re only a few days away from Christmas Day. You can feel it in the air. People are more hurried, yet often more pleasant. People are excited for the advent of traditional scenes, giving of gifts, smelling and consuming of comfort foods, and all that comes along with the several days that surround the day we celebrate Christ’s birth.

Just 15 minutes ago on my short drive to work I passed what I would categorize as a little worse than a fender bender. One car was turned sideways across the two lanes and the other car involved was sitting in a side street. I slowed down as I approached; clearly this accident was only a few minutes old. One man was standing in the road, presumably the owner of the car in the middle of the road. He was on his cell phone when I rolled slowly to a stop, put my window down and asked, “You okay? You need anything?” With a remarkable smile on his face he replied, “No, I’m all good! Thank you!” I wonder if we were in the depths of February or the midst of May, would his response have been so chipper?

There’s a truth that permeates this season, whether it is acknowledged or not. Like a bike tire with a hundred thin spokes all connected to one hub that holds them all together, so are our activities, busyness, and traditions of the Christmas season when it relates to this one central truth. Without the hub, the rest of it would be utterly meaningless.

Here is the truth hub. I hope (but never assume) that through this blog you have caught glimpses of it if not been outright smacked in the face with it by way of things I’ve written in the past…

Because of God’s immeasurable love for humanity, and in light of our sinfulness that has created a separation between us and Him–a distance we could never do anything about on our own–He sent the Way for us to be reunited with Him: That Way is Jesus. Jesus was God among us; God with us. Jesus grew, lived, loved, healed, taught, served, died, and rose again to complete the very mission God the Father sent Him to accomplish. And because of Jesus’ birth and completed mission, you and I can have all that God desires to give us right here and right now. In this season of traditions, blurry hurriedness, pop songs that pay lip service to what its all about, and our insatiable appetite for our own comfort, we gaze into a stone trough that held a human baby that contained all of Divinity in fragile bone, soft skin, and the helplessness of a held child. Help came to us and through His birth and our faith placed in Who He is, we are made alive in Him. Apart from Him, though we may amass to ourselves the stuff of success as the world sees it, we are completely lost and empty.

In this Christmas season, I pray that beyond all the things to check off on your task list and on all the wish lists, that we may return to the center and embrace the person of Jesus. He is the Center, the Hope, the Healing, the Messiah promised to us in Genesis 3, and the One who holds all we need for all we face.