Every Christmas we set up nativity scenes: the baby in the manger, Mary and Joseph on either side, shepherds and animals gathered around.

It looks peaceful, holy, exactly how a birth story should be.

But the actual story was not nearly this idyllic.

When Mary gets pregnant before she and Joseph are married, his family assumes they broke the rules or she cheated on him. When Mary says God did this, everyone thinks she's delusional and Joseph's family tells him to leave her. Her own family doesn't know what to believe.

Then Joseph has a dream that tells him to stay, and somehow he does.

This is what we're celebrating.

And I’m here to remind you that life is messy.

We spend so much energy trying to create the “perfect Christmas”--the perfect family gathering where everyone gets along.

This is what we're celebrating. A scandal, families in chaos, a birth in a barn with animals and strangers around instead of family.

It’s the story that is central to our beliefs. That mess, that dysfunction, that completely wrong setup is perfect.

We just can't see our own lives that way.

We keep waiting for everything to fall into place, for our family to get along better, for our circumstances to make sense, for life to look more like what we thought it would.

We think when that happens, then we'll have what we're looking for.

But what if this is it? What if your messy family, your confusing circumstances, your life that looks nothing like you planned is already full of God's blessings, already perfect, and you just don't recognize it?

This week, look at your life the way you look at the nativity scene. Stop wishing it were different and start seeing it for what it already is.

God Bless.

FF