Preparing Him Room

If you are like me, the Christmas season increases in busyness the closer I get to Christmas Day. Sometimes, my family gets so busy balancing plans, last-minute gifts, and cooking meals that we forget the whole reason for our frantic pace. If we are not careful, our hearts can be as busy as Bethlehem, with no room for the Christ of Christmas.

In his incarnation hymn, “Joy to the World,” Issac Watts (1674-1748) saw the challenge in his own day: “Joy to the world the Lord is come / Let earth receive her King / Let every heart prepare Him room.” So, this isn’t a modern problem. Our problem making room for Jesus in our hearts stretches back to the innkeeper, but the Bible gives us some concrete steps to identify how to make room.

Step 1: Acknowledge where we are in our busyness.

God asked a great question of Adam in the garden: “Adam, where are you?” Of course, God knew where Adam was, but He was inviting Adam himself to recognize where he was. For us to prepare Christ’s room, we have to ask ourselves, “Where am I? What are my anxieties during this season? What is stressing me?” When we identify where we are, we can acknowledge our busyness and need to prepare Him room.

Step 2: Address our busyness with the gospel

When we acknowledge where we are, we can address our busyness with the promises of the gospel. Note that the shepherds were guarding their flock, and note that they left what they were doing when the announcement from the angel changed their priority. Often, we are busy by our own design. We need to be reminded that most people don’t have as exacting expectations for us as we do for ourselves. A failure to bake that extra pie for dinner (that your family won’t even finish) or finish assembling all of the toys on Christmas Eve will not ruin the specialness of Christmas. We can show ourselves the same grace Christ shows us in our busyness (cf., Luke 10:38–42).

Step 3: Make yourself busy with love, joy, hope, and peace.

It’s really quite difficult to stop doing some negative thing without replacing it with a positive thing. Providentially, God gives us a tremendous bank of resources to trade our busyness for greater portions. Our spiritual disciplines are central to this.

• Make it a priority to gather with the church during this season. One of the chief ways we make ourselves busy with virtue is by carving out time for corporate worship. For centuries, Christians have recognized the importance of subjecting their time to the worship of Christ, especially at Christmas. We live in a world of trade-offs, and saying yes to gathering as a church means saying no to other things. But, we will not regret the blessing of grace from saying no to less important things and yes to gathering as a church. 
• Make it a priority to read and pray the Scriptures as a family. By carving out time from doing things about Christmas, you can actually participate in Christ-mass by worshiping the Lord in reading Scripture out loud as a family and praying. A great place to start is by reading a few verses in the first chapters of Luke’s gospel. It is familiar, but challenge yourself to reflect again on how the Christmas story addresses your busyness by thinking how you yourself are similar to and different from the shepherds, the innkeeper, the magi, etc. 
• Make it a priority to serve your neighbor in some way. By carving out time, energy, and finances to serve our neighbor, we are ensuring that we are living a Christmas life—that is, we are living a life in light of the gospel. Our kids are young, so we are going to bake bread and cookies for our neighbors. It won’t change our neighbors’ lives, but it will show them we took the time to think of them. But most importantly, it will teach our kids that Christmas wasn’t just for us, but instead, Christmas is good news for the world.