Eventually, we stopped buying gifts for the foster kids.  Sometime around Thanksgiving the ads would pop up on the radio, the Giving Trees would show up in the grocery stores, and church groups would hold their annual toy drives.  By Christmas Eve, my parents would have received a few industrial-sized garbage sacks full of brightly wrapped gifts to put under the waiting tree, all marked with paper tags such as:  Girl, 2 yrs, doll; or Boy, mittens, small.    We always held back a few things for the children’s birthdays or other special occasions, but still, the generosity of a kind community filled our Christmas celebration with an embarrassment of riches.

That day, after a late breakfast , mom would bag up the mountain of paper and bows and dad would make bottles and change diapers and they’d send over-stimulated little ones off to naps.   Over the next weeks and months my parents would see those same children through countless bottles, boxes of diapers, doctor’s appointments, therapy appointments, visits with family, adoption proceedings and sometimes, a return to their birth homes.  Every day for over 20 years, my parents gave their presence to a succession of small, wounded children who had nowhere else to go.

Christmas is the time of year we rehearse the Incarnation, a word that literally means “in flesh.”  A word that tells us God didn’t deny Himself a couple of mochas and drop a festively wrapped doll in the toy drive barrel.  Rather, the God of Heaven stripped down, slid from Mary’s womb into the dank, cold air of earth, and found a home in the waiting arms of a tired, scared man and woman; consenting to partake of the everyday substance of the people He loves.

The Incarnation relentlessly forces us to make room in our lives for Christ.  Jesus is not just an idea, He is a living, breathing Person who takes up real space.  When He enters the world lives are interrupted and rearranged: first Mary, then Joseph, then the disciples, then Israel, then the world.  As Christ indwells us, we learn to practice living the Incarnation with others.  We must make space, move around our priorities, open doors, shuffle time and even disrupt the most intimate structures of our lives in order to become the in flesh representation of Christ on earth.

This season, every trip to the grocery store, every turn of the radio dial, every Salvation Army bell ringer reminds us that there are good people in the world willing to give something, to make the world a bit brighter for others.  But the Incarnation demands that we ask ourselves if we are as willing as Mary and Joseph to disrupt our whole lives and welcome the work of Christ.  How many of us are willing to live the day to day Incarnation as people like my parents have done?  That ceaseless, grinding reality that comes after the gift is unwrapped and the toys are put away?

During Christmas, while the images of Jesus’ presence and mission are on full display, we can make this more than just another celebration or a once-a-year giving fest.  We can allow it to become a yearly reorienting, a chance to assess whether or not we have truly lived the Incarnation in our own space and time as Christ modeled for us in His coming and His living.

Some ideas for incarnational living:

Become a foster parent.

Adopt a foster child.

Rethink hospitality.

Commit to working with the homeless.

Build a house.

Make new friends.

Adopt a brother or sister.

Adopt a grandparent.

Adopt a family.

Bring a meal.

Grow one.

Teach someone to read.

Get radical with giving.

The following post is by Laura Boggess of The Wellspring. She has joined the 12 Days of Community with High Callings Blog and promoted ChristmasChange with an amazing and practical idea on saving your Christmas change this year. That link is also in the sidebar. Enjoy!

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At the Temple Gate Called Beautiful

Every day people pass him by on their way into the temple. Some take pity; throw him a few spare coins. Others look right through him as if he does not exist. Still others, on their way to worship nonetheless, look at him in scorn and anger, resenting the intrusion that his meager existence creates on their conscience.

But one day everything would change.

“Look at us!” Peter said.

And in doing so a crippled beggar was made whole. In the name of Jesus he was healed.

I, too, pass through my own gates Beautiful. On my way to the grocery store, to and from work, driving back from the shopping mall…

They are always there, reaching out their empty hands to me. In the eyes of a hungry child on television. Or the sound of the Salvation Army bell ringing. The March of Dimes, St. Jude’s, the Red Cross, the American Cancer Society…everywhere I turn my help is implored.

At the place called Beautiful, too often I avert my eyes to the not so beautiful. I turn my back on a work of God’s own hands.

But one day, everything would change.

As I come to a halt at the stoplight, a man with only one leg stands at the intersection.

“Homeless Veteran”, his sign reads. “Will work for food.”

If I roll down my window, I can reach out and touch him.

I want to invoke the name of our Lord and impart that healing that took place at the gate called Beautiful so long ago. But I cannot make this man whole. Only the Lord knows the circumstances of his life. Only the Lord knows what led him to this street corner holding up his sign of need.

I roll down the window.

“May God bless you,” I say, as I slip the folded bill into his dirty hand.

And I look at him. Into his eyes. I see him. I see a person. A real live work of God. And I smile.

And for just one moment he sees Jesus.

It is I who is healed in this giving.

As I drive away, the smell of stale cigarettes and unwashed flesh lingers on my hand. I want to wash it away. Instead, I hold my fingers against my nose and softly breathe in the sharp aroma of sorrow.

And for just one moment, I see Jesus.

We sat down together, three friends and former college roommates. I was nervous with excited tension and I didn’t know exactly why, but I’d never really done this before.

Two of us knew our little secret plan was about to reveal itself and we hoped it would be seen as grace and not pity or pride.

Our unsuspecting friend sat with ringing hands, feeling my awkward attempts at explaining why we had shown up that night. We giggled and she kept saying what and I kept saying um.

She and her husband were the ones, we knew that. The ones that would be surprised by God’s grace in the midst of tricky things.

It started with an idea, an attempt at being less careless with our much. We knew that if we started giving some things up, just small things, over some months we’d have hundreds of dollars. So we quit coffee and we stopped staring at clearance tags at Target.  We kept a tally through our weeks of what we refrained from spending. Then we’d meet and we’d ask what did you give up and then we’d share and talk about how we weren’t missing anything. Then we’d say God you have to tell us who to give this money to and we were so excited.

I had no idea I would be so excited.

It took some time, but then someone we loved was hurting, so we knew. We talked about it and said that’s what I was thinking too! So we brought the change to the bank, we piled up the bills and then they turned into one large lump sum to give.

We called our friend and said we needed to stop over.

You see, our friend and her husband are adopting from China (and are now working on a tandem adoption while they wait).  They are carefully saving and living on not the heftiest of incomes in the first place, and then our friend’s beloved sister was found to have a tumor and she was in Cambodia all by herself .  She would have surgery and it was nearly Christmas. So our friend was sad and scared and wishing she could see and hug her sister.

So there we sat and I said um…um…we have been doing this thing…this thing where we save up just little bits of money and we would turn it in one time a week and then we would pray over it and then we knew it was yours and we want you to be able to go to your sister, or put the money toward the adoption, or do whatever you need to do with it. It’s yours.

I handed her the envelope and watched her shaking hands, and I was filled with more humility than I have ever known. She pulled out that money and her high-pitched voice came, the one she uses with her emotions and the tears ran down her face, and it was so good.

We walked away and got in the car, and I felt like I’d been sitting with God. Because I think that’s what He’s all about and I knew He had done this good thing, not us.

Our friend’s sister couldn’t come home for Christmas, but soon her favorite person on the planet would board a plane to be with her. These two beautiful, loving, amazing women were met in their place of need because God is crazy about them. And all we had to do was skip some coffee and the clearance racks.

That’s why He came, that baby in a manger, the One that changes everything. He came so we could call and say that we’re coming, and then replace some sorrow with some joy.