Watching Dallas Jenkins latest movie, “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” I was transported to my childhood, to the Christmas pageants I experienced every year in church and in school.  Pageants that were the same year after year.  While there was often another message attached to the Christmas story to try to liven it up, it always ended with the same scene, with Mary and Joseph, angels, shepherds and the wise men descending on Bethlehem.  But like any other story repeated so often, the Christmas story became for me like old news, and honestly, sometimes even a little boring.     

As I grew older, I wasn’t looking for anything new and profound in Christmas pageants.  Rather I found myself watching for the characters who would make me laugh; for the shepherd who nervously plays with his bathrobe until he has it turned inside out; for the angel who constantly waves at her mom and dad in the audience; and for the wise man who grabs the microphone anxious to hear the sound of his voice, and then forgets his line.  It was always a fun event.  

For many of us the Christmas story has become so familiar, so old, that we are no longer surprised or stunned by the glory of God in it.  In the biblical account, the characters are stunned, surprised and overwhelmed seeing the glory of God.  Luke tells us when the angel appeared to the shepherds, they saw the radiance of the Lord’s glory and were terrified (Luke 2:7-11).  John says, when the word (Jesus) became a human being, we saw the glory of the Father’s one and only Son (John 1:14).  And then Paul says it can happen for all of us.  “For God, who said, ‘Let there be light in the darkness,’ has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6).    

This Christmas will you look for the glory of God in the face of Jesus?  Will you be stunned by his desire to be held and embraced?  See the brilliance in how he orchestrates his arrival?  Be amazed by a God who desires to make himself visible and touchable, approachable and knowable?  Will you see the beauty of his character, the splendor of his grace, and the wonder of his love?  Will you be surprised by his desire to be loved by you?  This happened in “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” when the hard, tough and mean Imogene Herdman found herself in a Christmas pageant playing mother Mary.  As she looked at the baby in her arms and realized who this baby was, her hardened heart softened and her eyes filled with tears of joy.  She was seeing the glory of God.