By: Rex Stump
Growing up I heard all kinds of stories, fairy tales, and nursery rhymes. Do you recall the nursery rhyme, Humpty-Dumpty? The story of an egg that breaks.
It goes like this:
Humpty-Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall,
All the king’s horses, and all the king’s men, cannot put Humpty-Dumpty together again.
Short and sweet, but what does it mean? First, this poor egg seemed to be reckless. It should have known better than to sit on a wall! Right?
It’s also about the attempt and the failure of trying to fix something that is broken. All the king’s men, and horses…doesn’t make sense…horses trying to fix an egg.
Then again, we are talking about an egg sitting on a wall. Anyway, no one could fix Humpty-Dumpty!
It’s about brokenness. Sound familiar? Each of us have our bad moments, our mishaps, and even tragedies where we fall, and it seems we just can’t fix the brokenness.
Broken dreams, shattered relationships…the list is endless. We are like Humpty-Dumpty, broken. The Bible describes it in Romans 3:23, “All have sinned, all fall short of the glory of God.”
All of us have fallen, we are just like Humpty-Dumpty. Some of us are reckless, some of us are pushed, and some of us jump! But all of us have fallen. We have all sinned.
To sin is to miss the mark we are aiming for. It’s to rebel against God’s standards. In the end, each of us faces and experience pain, hurt, and brokenness in life. If only we could be put back together. If only there was someone who could fix us!
I have some Good News! There is one who can fix us! Jesus Christ. Humanity was so broken that there was only one solution for us, God himself. God in the flesh. Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, God with us.
The Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We observed His glory, the glory as the One and Only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. (John 1:14; 3:16)
Right now, we are in a state of pain. We are hurting, we are broken, we are at our wits ends. Like Humpty-Dumpty, we just can’t seem to put ourselves back together again.
But God showed His own love for us, that while we were still sinners, still broken, Christ Jesus died for us! (Romans 5:8)
Christmas is when brokenness finds healing! When hopelessness is replaced with hope. Jesus, the object of God’s grace comes to us! And He does so willingly. We didn’t have to ask; He willingly came for us!
Christmas is about Jesus.
When everything in this world that was broken, chaotic, finally comes to a point of realization that it’s worth stopping and kneeling by the trough. Look at the infant Jesus, so beautiful, and innocent.
It’s amazing that’s something so small and frail, contained the infinite, and eternal power of God within Him. The greatest thing to be worshiped on Christmas morning is not a tree, nor the things under the tree.
Not the food, nor the relationships of those who join you. It’s about one relationship that you must have. And that relationship is with Jesus Christ.
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Rex Stump is the Area Director for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and serves as a Pastor at True North Church in Wauseon, Ohio.