Molly Fernandes
As we enter into the heart of Christmas, let’s engage in a necessary soul searching…The lights of December often serve a twofold purpose: They illuminate our festivities, but they also mask our shadows. We find ourselves standing at the edge of another Christmas, asking a haunting question: Why do I behave the way I should not? We feel the weight of words that divided instead of healed, and the silence where we should have spoken Truth. We recognise that while we celebrate the birth of the Word, our own words and actions have often lacked His grace.
To understand why we drift, we must look at the little babe in the crib through the lens of His mission. We often venerate the poverty of the manger, focusing on the lack of silver or stone. But as Christ’s ministry unfolded, He revealed a different definition of poverty.
To Jesus, poverty was not merely empty pockets, but those with empty spirits. He saw the wealthy Pharisee and the learned scribe as the truly destitute men – blind and deaf to the movement of the Divine. They were tethered to worldly culture, hiding their reality behind robes of self-righteousness. When we choose to divide rather than build, or when we neglect to guide others toward the Truth, we are operating from that same spiritual poverty. We become poor because we have allowed the outer noise of the world to drown out the inner voice of the Spirit.
The Child in the manger was not a passive figure; He was the forerunner of a new way of being. He did not wait for the broken to find Him; He went to them. He spoke bluntly to the spiritual elite because He loved the truth more than their comfort.
If we find ourselves doing things we are not called to do, it is likely because we have stopped following from the front. We have retreated into the shame and sin of the worldly culture – a culture that prizes individual ego over communal restoration. We prioritise our own honour over the Respect and Love that Christ modelled.
The Gospel of John tells us that the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us. The tragedy of the first Christmas was not just that there was no room in the inn, but that there was no room in the hearts of those who should have known Him best.
We often fail to guide others in the way of the Lord because we haven’t given Him a place to pitch His tent in our own daily lives. We are too busy managing the outer noise, our reputations, our grievances, our schedules – to listen to the quiet reality of His presence. We celebrate a Christmas of tinsel while neglecting the Christmas of the soul.
Which Christmas shall we celebrate?
This year, the choice is clear. We can continue to live in the reality we try to hide, or we can embrace the blunt truth of the forerunner.
To celebrate the true Christmas is to:
•Acknowledge our blindness: Admit where we have chosen division over unity.
•Silence the noise: Create a space for the inner voice to be heard over the world’s demands.
•Seek the spiritually hungry: Look past the outward appearance and see the emptiness in those around us and in ourselves.
The babe in the crib calls us to a life of radical honesty. He calls us to stop hiding and to start building. This Christmas, let us not just celebrate His birth; let us allow Him to finally pitch His tent in the center of our lives, turning our division into discipleship.
The Untended Tent
