The Good News is Still for Me
Jordan McKinney
Sometimes I feel like the Christmas season brings up mixed emotions for me. It has nothing to do with any tragedy or anything like that. I am a pastor's kid (PK) and have been in church my whole life. With that it means that I have heard every Christmas story what feels like 1,000 times. I have also been in ministry vocationally and as a volunteer since I was in middle school, so I have told the Christmas story hundreds of times. For me it has taken some of the Christmas magic out of the season. I don’t enjoy Christmas Eve or any of the events around Christmas because I am working at them or putting on the event myself. Over the years I have had to become very intentional with what the Christmas season and the Christmas story mean to me.
It has become way too easy to “go through the motions” of telling the story of Mary, Joseph, the Shepherds, and Jesus' birth. But this year especially I am trying hard to personalize it way more. This year it really hit me after telling the story of the Shepherds in the field at one of our ECS school chapels. After they found Jesus and worshipped him, they went all through the town telling the people the good news and about all they had heard and seen. After telling the k-3rd graders this story, I was reflecting on the story and I felt like God asked me, “what does the good news of the Christmas story mean to you?”
Now He wasn’t asking for the generic “church” answers. Those I have known and been teaching and can easily say. This was much more personal to me as an individual. All the church answers are still true and still meaningful. But having said them so many times they lost the impact that they once held for me. So this year I have been starting a new practice of changing some of the pluralistic language of the good news and making it more personal. A recent example would be changing the verse 1 John 4:9-10, which says “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” And slightly changing it to say “This is how God showed His love FOR ME: He sent His one and only son into the world that I might live through Him. This is love: not that I loved God, but that He loved ME and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for MY sins.”
It is a simple exercise to do and one I have done before. But it has reminded me that Jesus didn’t just come for all people, but the Good News is for me personally. It reminds me about how my life is different, how much Jesus loves me, and how he wants a personal relationship with me. It is a great reminder that God doesn’t want anything from me, He wants a relationship with me. He has transformed my life and I know I would be a different and not a pleasing person without Him in my life.
So if you are hearing the Christmas story for the 1,000th time this year and it has lost some of its meaning for you, take some time to personalize it again. Remind yourself that Jesus was born as your savior, to come and change your life, and fix your broken relationship with the Father. He loves you so much that Jesus humbled himself to be born in a manger, born into humanity, to take your sins and die on the cross for you! I pray that the good news gets new life and meaning for you this Christmas season.