Fall on your knees amid God's rescue

Every year at Christmas I select a phrase from a carol to make my focus for the season. This year it comes from “O Holy Night.” There's a multi-dimensional reason for choosing, “Fall on your knees!” For one thing I'm working at bending my knee after temporarily killing it — but not by falling.

I'm at war with a flock of up to 50 wild turkeys hanging around our place. They descend in the yard around the crabapple tree next to the house dropping “calling cards” everywhere. You probably know the routine — pound on the window, run outside flapping your arms and hollering until you're hoarse, bang cooking pan lids. I even tried wasp spray — neglecting to take into account I was shooting into the wind.

One morning I chased the turkeys into the woods across the drive. They grouped there hovering — waiting for their chance to re-invade. I was livid. I went after them up a steep embankment. My mistake was throwing a pine cone in a blast of anger while my leg was braced on the downhill slant.

Of course, the pine cone fell nowhere near the turkeys. I ended up with a painful strained knee — a trip to radiology for an X-ray — and the doctor calling it knee effusion, or water on the knee which would eventually disappear.

“Fall on your knees!” is incorporated into “O Holy Night” as a privilege of awe and wonder over such an amazing event as the birth of Christ. The lines preceding it are, “A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices, For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.”

Where is that yonder in today's weary world?

The night Jesus was born there may have been “no room in the inn” for Him, but there is always room in His heart for suffering people. He Himself suffered. This is not a common thing that God would send His Son into a hurting world.

The Bible says that Jesus “emptied Himself” — or “laid aside His privileges” — as God to take on humanity. How else was God going to reach and rescue people in their need? How was He going to make it plain who He is? How was He going to establish a way to Him? How was He going to make the kingdom of heaven — the promise beyond what earthly living offers — known?

Savior of the world — this is the glorious morn message of Christmas. It covers everything — from the tragic to the trivial. It even searches out an irate woman letting turkeys get to her.

When I hear “Fall on your knees!” it is for the unequaled birth of Christ — and for all the rescues He's done for me.