Significance Lost—Luke 1:26-38

Russ Ramsey

I do not always know a good gift when I see one—even when I receive one. Take for example, the gift my grandparents gave one year— a photo album. Full from front to back of old black and white pictures, each one carefully labeled, identifying each person in terms of their relationship to me, dating back 100 years!

One day my mom and I were talking about a certain family member, whom I could not place. She told me to go get the photo album and she’d show me a picture. But in the time since receiving that album, I had found a “better” use for the actual binder itself, so I had removed, in no particular order, the pictures and the labels that were next to them and put them all in a shoebox. I had no idea what I had done!!! My grandparents had given me something that was precious, and I didn’t know it. They had given me something that told me of myself and of their relationship to me. I did not understand. I perceived it as ordinary though it was extraordinary. I perceived it as an incomprehensible book of strange faces though it was really telling me my own story. I did not understand how much of my story was contained in those pages—how much of who I am now and why I am who I am was told.

Christmas is about a gift God has given that we often fail to understand. In the perceived “ordinary-ness” and incomprehensibility of Christmas, we’re tempted to strip it of its contents and throw them in no particular order into a box we tuck away, while we find better uses for the “holiday season” which once contained them. And yet, like that photo album, we can hear the story of God’s gift of His Son and have all the significance lost on us. We can perceive it as ordinary when it is truly the most extraordinary event of all time. We can perceive it as incomprehensible when it really is giving us the deepest, most profound understanding we can ever hope to have of our own story.