White Hair for a White Christmas

White hair is what we won’t see when we first look into the cattle box of Christ to adore him. With the angels we’ll worship an infant God come to save us from our sin. Maybe Jesus was born a baby in the spirit of Esau, “hairy” or “rough,” but most do not picture him that way.

An aged John, however, on a black rock Alcatraz was given this stunning vision of Christ “The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire” (Rev 1:14). Christ is pictured with a blizzard of white hair in the middle of the seven golden lamp-stands or the seven churches he was writing to.

Now in our day white hair is to be avoided at any cost. It’s the stuff of senility, weakness, and or at least a goofy lack of competence. Gary Larsen of the Far Side cartoons always pictured God as an old man with long white hair and flowing beard and robes. His God is omnipotent and omniscient but still a bit comic. In one strip, God cooks up the earth in his kitchen, shaking a bottle labeled “Jerks” over it while thinking to himself, “Just to make things interesting.”

But in the day of John and Jesus white hair spoke of eternity, of Christ’s agelessness, of the dignity of his endless days. The little one in the manger is tiny but at the same time the Stallion of Timelessness. He has never not been. Doesn’t that give you a feeling of security? Of comfort. 

My mission work isn’t what I hoped it would be. How about your work in the marketplace? Isn’t parenting challenging? I read about a teenager who was tired of being told what to do so he went and joined the Marines. We all make rash decisions like this and then what? 

Just knowing Jesus has been around forever gives us a sense of security when we feel overwhelmed. Please, this Christmas in your worship put some white hair on the baby Jesus with the tiny head. White hair says, “I am wise. I understand many things you do not because I have lived forever. Wise beyond measure I truly am as one who lived even outside time.”

We worship Christ at Christmas not just because he was meek. And not just because he was mighty. But because no one in history ever united them the way he did. Sovereign might in sacrificial meekness. And get this, he promises us white hair too one day! That’s the sort of hair we will have in eternity because he was born to save us. O Come let us adore him.

Wishing you White Hair for a White Christmas,                                                                                                                                                            

Pastor Tim