Christmas Story - The Facebook Version

A few weeks back, one of my friends called me up and said, “Hey, the Vodafone guys have made an ad about you.” Staying in a house without television, I had lost touch with ads and had absolutely no idea about what he was talking about. Understanding my forced detachment from the world, my friend told that he was talking about Vodafone’s latest ad with the theme “He’s always on Facebook.”  I realized what he  exactly meant. I defended myself, but I knew my defence was weak. I, like millions of others across the globe, do spend a lot of time on Facebook updating status, writing on others walls, adding photos etc. We, the Facebookworms update about anything and everything, from our likes or dislikes, to whats happening in the world, to vacation pics, to whats for dinner, to our favourite team's score, to the slightest  cold or fever.........  Many of the major events also get captured through our FB status -  be it a lunar eclipse or the anti-corruption drive or the first F1 race in India or Sehwag’s double century – almost everything. Have you ever thought how the FB updates would have looked for events which happened before FB came into existence? I recently came across a video which showed how Christmas would have been capture on FB. Have a look at it:

Christmas story has so many people in it : Mary, Joseph, shepherds, angels, kings, Herod..... The one personality among them who touches me the most is Joseph. A Jewish carpenter who was about to get married to a beautiful girl named Mary. Everything in his life was going good. It was picture perfect, when suddenly strange events turned his life upside down. The girl he was about to get married became pregnant and according to her, she conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit.  The explanation given was too weird to believe. Nothing like that had ever happened before – a virgin being conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit.  He would have been shocked to know that. It was such a shameful incident. He was hurt, humiliated, confused, shattered. His perfect life seemed ruined. His friends left him, neighbours mocked him, he was left alone. He wanted to break the engagement, but one day an angel appeared to him in his dream and told him that Mary had indeed conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. Leaving all his concerns and worries behind and without caring about what others would think about him, he believed in God’s plan.  From that moment on he was always by the side of Mary, every single day, through all that she did, through all the journeys she had to take including the long and difficult journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem when she was heavily pregnant, silently taking care of her and the baby inside her who would be the Saviour of the world. He did all this selflessly never thinking about himself even if that meant at times silently suffering for their sake. All his suffering was worth it when he saw the beautiful baby boy being born in a manger in Bethlehem. God’s plan materialized in his life that Christmas night.

Christmas is about joy, about celebration, about families coming together, about carols, about cakes and gifts and decorations. Joseph shows us that Christmas is also about listening to God, its about having faith in Him even when everything in our lives is going wrong, its about knowing that God is with us through our greatest suffering, its about realizing that no matter what happens we are safe in God’s hand, its about trusting in God’s plan for us and co-operating with Him to ensure that His plan materializes in our lives.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

May you and your family have a blessed Christmas this year. May your family be like The family in Nazareth which lived two thousand years ago, which listened to God, trusted in His ways, obeyed Him and saw His plan materialize in their lives and through them in the lives of many others.

God Bless!