Christmas is this week.

For most people, that sentence lands like warmth. Like a familiar room. Like the smell of something cooking and the sound of wrapping paper being torn open.

For me, it lands differently this year.

This is my first Christmas without my wife and kids in the home with me. They’re back in Kansas. I’m here, and the distance is not abstract. It has weight. It shows up in quiet moments. It shows up when I see families shopping together, when I hear kids laugh in the next aisle, when a song comes on that I used to hum in the kitchen with them nearby.

I’m sad. I’m not going to dress that up.

And I’m also hopeful, in a stubborn kind of way. I hope they have a beautiful Christmas celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. I hope there’s peace in the house. I hope the Spirit can settle like a blanket over them, even if my arms can’t.

And because I can’t be there the way I want to be, I’m doing the one thing I can do without permission or proximity.

I’m turning my face toward Him.

Not toward a holiday, not toward nostalgia, not toward a perfect image of family life, but toward the Savior who came anyway. Toward Jesus Christ, whose birth matters because He did not stay in the cradle. He came with a mission, and He completed it.

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Luke’s account isn’t fancy. That’s part of the power.

A government decree forces travel. A young couple moves under strain and uncertainty. A baby is born away from home, not in a place built for comfort, and Luke doesn’t soften the edges: there was no room.
It’s easy to romanticize the manger from a safe distance. It’s harder to feel what it meant in real time: exhaustion, stress, the unfamiliar, the cold, the kind of vulnerability that makes you want to protect what you can’t fully control.

And yet, that’s where God chose to enter.

Not in a palace. Not with a guard. Not with a parade.

Heaven announced His arrival to shepherds—men who worked outdoors, lived in the dark half the time, and carried animals, calloused hands, and ordinary concerns.

But they also understood lambs.

In a world shaped by the Law of Moses, shepherds knew what sacrifice cost and what it meant when a lamb was set apart. So when the Father chose to share “glad tidings of great joy,” He shared it with humble shepherds who could feel the sign in their bones: a baby wrapped and laid in a manger.
Shepherds had long wrapped newborn lambs to protect them, setting them aside for what lay ahead. That night the symbol took on flesh. The Lamb of God lay in swaddling clothes—the quiet beginning that pointed forward to His willing sacrifice on the cross.

And then the sky cracked open with glory.

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” (Luke 2:14, KJV)

That word peace can sound like a Hallmark slogan if we’re not careful. But Luke’s story doesn’t read like a slogan. It reads like a rescue.

Peace wasn’t promised because circumstances would be easy. Peace was proclaimed because the Savior had come close.
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I write to a broad Christian audience, so I want to be clear about what I’m doing here.

Alongside the Bible, I also believe in the Book of Mormon as another witness of Jesus Christ. In it, an ancient prophet named Nephi is shown a vision that includes the Messiah’s coming. You do not have to share my beliefs to understand the point I’m making, because the point is not to win an argument.

The point is Jesus.

Nephi’s depiction adds a phrase that has helped me understand Christmas with more honesty: the condescension of God.
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Not condescension in the modern sense of talking down, but condescension in the sense of descending. God coming down.

Nephi sees a virgin mother. He sees the Child. And the vision presses this truth into the reader’s hands: the Holy One did not keep His distance. He stepped into mortality. He entered our vulnerability. He did not remain safely removed from grief, fear, betrayal, poverty, loneliness, rejection, pain, or death.

That changes how I read Luke 2.

It turns the manger into a statement.

God is not ashamed of human weakness.

God is not repelled by human mess.

God is willing to come near.

If you’ve ever felt like you had to clean yourself up before you could be loved, Christmas contradicts that. Christ arrived in the middle of a world that was still broken.
He arrived anyway.

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If the manger is the beginning, the mission is the point.

Jesus spoke clearly about why He came.

In Luke, He reads from Isaiah and applies it to Himself:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me… he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted… to preach deliverance to the captives… to set at liberty them that are bruised.” (Luke 4:18–19, KJV)

That isn’t vague spiritual language. It’s a job description written for people who are hurting.

Then John captures the heartbeat of heaven in plain words:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son…” (John 3:16, KJV)

And then the line that keeps me from turning faith into a weapon:

“For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” (John 3:17, KJV)

Saved. Not shamed. Not crushed. Not permanently branded by our worst day.

Jesus also described His mission with the kind of humility that should unsettle anyone who uses power to dominate:

“The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45, KJV)

He didn’t come to be served. He came to serve. He didn’t come to collect applause. He came to pay a price.
And He framed it with a shepherd’s voice, the voice of Someone who stays when others flee:
“I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10, KJV)
“I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.” (John 10:11, KJV)

This is not the story of a moral teacher who gave good advice and died like everyone else.

This is the story of a Savior who came to do what we cannot do for ourselves.
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Here’s the truth that keeps Christmas from becoming sentimental for me:

If there were no Resurrection, His birth would have been the birth of any other baby.

A beautiful story, yes. A moving story, yes. A tragic story, maybe. But still, only a story.

The reason the angels’ announcement matters is because that Child grew, ministered, suffered, died, and rose again.

His birth matters because death didn’t get the final word.

Without the Resurrection, humanity is still trapped in the same old math: everybody loses, eventually. Every family ends in a graveside. Every love story ends in absence. Every regret becomes permanent.

But the gospel refuses that ending.

Jesus Christ did not only come to show us how to live.

He came to defeat death.

And if He defeated death, then the ache I feel this Christmas is not meaningless. It’s not proof that God is absent. It’s proof that I live in a world still waiting for full healing.

The Resurrection means pain is real, but it is not ultimate.

It means separation hurts, but it is not permanent.

It means I can miss the people I love without treating my grief like the end of the story.

I’m not pretending this is easy. I am not pretending I don’t wish things were different right now. I do.

But I’m also not pretending the manger is the finish line. It never was.

The manger was God stepping into the arena.

The mission was God staying long enough to win.

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When life gets complicated, I notice how easily I try to make Christmas into a coping mechanism. A way to numb out. A way to dress up a wound.

This year I’m trying to let the story do what it was meant to do: bring me to Christ, not distract me from real life.

So I’m asking myself questions that don’t let me hide behind tradition.

I don’t ask these questions because I’m trying to be dramatic.

I ask them because I know what drifting feels like. I know what it feels like to avoid God while talking about God. I know what it feels like to use religion as performance instead of surrender.

And Christmas is not the season for performance.

It’s the season for coming home.

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If you’re reading this and your Christmas is joyful, I’m grateful. Receive it as a gift and let it draw you into worship.

If your Christmas is heavy, you’re not alone. Some of us are walking into the week with grief, regret, loneliness, family tension, financial stress, or an empty chair at the table.

Jesus Christ came for both kinds of people.

He came for the ones singing.

He came for the ones barely holding it together.

So here’s my simple invitation this week:

When you take the Sacrament, take it with fresh intent.

Not as a routine. Not as a religious checkbox. Not as something you do while thinking about lunch.

Take it as a return.

Take it as a whisper to the Savior that you need Him.

Take it as a small act of trust that His birth had purpose, His ministry had power, His death had meaning, and His Resurrection changes what is possible for you and for me.

If you’ve wandered, come back.

If you’re tired, come anyway.

If you’re ashamed, come anyway.

The table was never for the people who have it all together.

It was for the people who need the One who does.

This Christmas week, I praise my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Not only for the baby in the manger, but for the Redeemer who rose, and for the Shepherd who still comes looking for the lost.



Gratefully,





Scott Alan Westhoff
Create A Divine Day.

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