Shannon and I went to see The Nutcracker at the NYC Ballet a few years ago. She had never seen it. Tchaikovsky is a great composer, so much so that this solid classic is not even one of his best works. Nevertheless, the Nutcracker is like Christmas on steroids. My little sister took ballet and I remember her scurrying across the stage in her tutu every Christmas every year for what felt like the first eighty years of my childhood. Even now, as I'm writing about it and you're reading about it, we can all hear the music in our heads. If you can't, go to the iTunes store, type in Nutcracker, click on the 2nd song they list and hear 20 seconds of it for free. Don't worry, it'll play in your head for the rest of today and tomorrow. There's something about Christmas and fantasy that clings to our minds. It starts when we're kids. I wonder sometimes if this isn't more connected to the true meaning of Christmas than we all realize. In speaking about the quest of the Magi in Matthew 2:9-10 it says, "After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed." Maybe all that is tinsel and tinkles about Christmas is our subconscious attempt to join the Magi in their chase of that eastern star. How brilliant and riveting a sight it must have been. Nothing stokes our imaginations like a chance to touch The Creator of imagination. Every curiosity and fascination of our minds is secondary and subservient to our curiosity and fascination with God. The promise of Christ manifested at His birth is the promise of our curiosity's satisfaction. In Christ, and in Christ alone, we will see God!
Is God the most interesting part of today for you or is there something else? Does faith in Christ inspire your imagination?
