And That's What Christmas Is All About: Seeing Calvary Through Smokey Mountain

Six months ago, I was halfway around the world, walking through the slums of Manila. I was walking on glass and human waste mixed with mud and mashed up food scraps and holding sticky hands in mine and feeling the sun beat down and bake all the garbage around me in an oven of heat and putrid filth. Even the air smelled polluted. And I was struggling in the midst of all this poverty to hold back tears and not stare too hard at what I was stepping on or what I was breathing in but to pray. To cry out to God above with my breaking heart and trust Him in the midst of such heartbreaking destitution. And I prayed. 

{excerpt from my journal on 6/28/2014}

These people have nothing and it breaks my heart. Really, nothing. Yet they're happy and glad to be alive. The Christians are so willing to serve and so joyful. I can't say I enjoyed it. Seeing all that poverty was heartbreaking. But it opened my eyes. I'll never forget the feeling of loving and reaching out to grimy kids with blackened bodies and sticky hands who have probably never bathed for months. Or seeing kids gnawing on bones atop a pile of trash or climbing Smokey Mountain with a grand view on top of a hill that almost looks natural, if not for the garbage and pieces of glass protruding from the dirt. It's. . .hard to find a word to describe the conditions there. It's very difficult to wrap my mind around it all without crying. Yet God is faithful.

I will always remember one little boy who stood naked from the waist down, blackened and grimy and tugging on my shirt, arms outstretched, begging to be held. A half-naked little boy. Dirty. Just wanting to be loved. And I tried to hide. I tried to say no. I tried to withdraw. His filth and nakedness repulsed me, and I wanted to shrink away and cry. Everything Western and sanitary screamed at me not to touch him.

But in that moment, I was reminded of Calvary's love. If Christ left all the glory in heaven above to live among the filth and waste of our sin, if He sacrificed everything He had for His glory and our salvation, if God Himself came to live and die among sinners in the slum of our hearts, in the depravity of our sin, how could I not love this child? How could I not give myself up and follow after the example of my Savior? If Christ died for me, how could I not love others? 

And in that moment, God taught me a precious lesson. 

Because now when I think about the incarnation of Christ and Christmas, of Christ coming down to earth and being made man, of Him leaving His heavenly throne and the riches of heaven for earth, of being born in the lowliest of places, of living among sinners who repelled Him with our wicked hearts in rebellion against Him, I think of the slums of Manila. I think of Christ, coming down to the filth of our sin and the garbage of our dark hearts, to work and live and love us. Our sin and our hearts were like garbage to Christ, like those sticky, blacked hands and that half-naked body and the human waste lying everywhere on the path. We were repulsive to Him with our thieving, lying, murderous, adulterous hearts. Yet Christ saw us in the spiritual slum of our depravity and He loved us. He loved us enough to come down and live among us, to die for our sins, that we might be freed from our bondage of sin and become adopted sons and daughters of the Most High.

And that's what Christmas is all about. How Christ came down to our level, to the spiritual equivalent of Smokey Mountain, to the filth of our hearts, for His glory and for our good. What an incredible God we have, a God so compassionate and loving and merciful, a God so patient with us in our sin and a God full of grace and blessings that we do not and cannot ever deserve. 

Lord, may we live life each day in light of all that You are and all that You've done.