He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found!

I love those lines from the popular carol “Joy to the World.” To me they capture the heart of the Christmas message.

There certainly is a lot of cursedness around these days. There are the “macro” curses of homelessness, poverty, political oppression, the sexual slave trade, religious persecution, whole populations devastated by war and disease. But there are also the “micro” curses that afflict many individual lives in highly personal ways: grief, abandonment, loneliness, abuse, fear of the future, difficult illnesses—and much more.

The good news of Christmas is that Jesus has come—born a baby in the manger of Bethlehem. Some might think that it would have been a better message if he had come as a mighty conqueror, descending from the skies to overpower all that afflicts us in our human condition.  That is the kind of solution, I think, that many Old Testament folks looked for, when they expressed the hope that the day would come when the kind of victory described in Isaiah 52:10 would be fulfilled: “The Lord has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.” The divine Deliverer would bare his arm and let his enemies have it! That’s how the curse would be lifted.

But the baring of the divine arms took place instead in a manger in a stable. God chose to experience the curse in a very intimate way, experiencing our cursedness from the inside by becoming one of us.

The final “conquering,” of course, came at the end, when Jesus was crucified, buried, and rose victoriously from the tomb. But it had to begin with his utter helplessness in the Bethlehem stable. “God with us”—in the cursedness of our helpless estate.

Because of the manger, we can be assured that ultimately the curse will be fully lifted from all of the creation. All of it: “Far as the curse is found!” And for all who rejoice in the birth of the Savior, the blessings of that victory have already begun to flow among us. May you know those blessings in a special way in this Christmas season!

Read another reflection—on Christmas and Occupy Wall Street—from Professor of Theology and Ethics Hak Joon Lee.