Happy Birthday, Lord!

I think somehow your birthday must have been more like this day in Mozambique. Most folks are still going about their usual business - stores are open and vendors are selling their goods. No one knew that the miraculous had occurred, the promise had been fulfilled, that God's long silence had been broken. Oh, some here know the truth. Others - they take what little they have and get caught up in the commercialism, too. Jesus, I don't want that for them. I don't want this day to become so much about the presents and the feasts that we forget how little fanfare there was when you came to earth.
There are broken, sick, poor, hungry people all around me. Help me to see them with your eyes. Help me to see their plight as the reason you sent your son.
I will so miss being with my family today. I wish that I wasn't so sick. I wish that I felt more like celebrating. But, Jesus, this is your day. You are worth celebrating no matter how I feel. You came. The fact that you humbled yourself and came into this mess of a world is more grand a thought than I can grasp. You could have just let us go on - we eventually would have killed ourselves off - or you could have destroyed us and started over again. But instead you came. You were a helpless little baby and the God that holds the span of the universe in His hand. How marvelous is that? Welcome to our world, Lord Jesus. Welcome to our brokenness that needs fixing and our hope that needs renewing. May you find in my heart your Bethlehem. Reign unchallenged there, Jesus. No one else has every given up glory to find me. No one else has died to know me. You are worth more than a life of service or well penned words could ever express. Welcome to the slum of my heart - build up and tear down as you choose, Holy Uncreated One. I love you beyond anything else, my Jesus. Around the world today may you take great pleasure in the way we celebrate you.