Jesus, the Messiah, grew up “like a tender green shoot, like a root in dry ground. He wasn’t ‘beautiful or majestic’ in the natural sense. Nothing about his appearance would have normally stood out to us. Actually, he was despised and rejected by mankind—a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.
We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised and we didn’t care. Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down… He was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins.” So don’t pity him; marvel at him—worship him. (Paraphrase of Isaiah 53:1-5)
Lord Jesus, this passage both takes our breath away and gives us eternal life. You’re not the “reason for the season”; you’re the meaning of life, history, and the cosmos. You don’t need us to put you back into Christmas. You put us where we could never otherwise be—in Abba’s family and favor, in yourself and your unfiltered delight. Our most present, eternal, and glorious address is “in Christ.”
You are the “tender green shoot” of Isaiah’s vision—the vital root emerging from the parched earth for the “greening” of our arid hearts and the flourishing of our fallen world. Jesus, you created beauty, yet you became the one with “no beauty” on our behalf. You took the vileness and ugliness of our sin to beautify and cherish us forever.
Your love for us has no parallels or end. You are the fountain of eternal pleasures and your laughter fills heaven—yet to redeem us you became “the man of sorrows—acquainted with deepest grief.” You are the God of love who in love came near and got low. You “became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God” (2Cor.5:21). Jesus, we don’t want a “merry little Christmas”—we want you. So Very Amen.
