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In the church, the season leading up to Christmas is Advent. But in the world of marketing, it’s a sales opportunity. Advertising catalogues and Netflix movie suggestions bombard us with idealized visions of Christmas—glittering lights, spotless homes, sentimental carols, and picture-perfect families gathered in harmony. We are encouraged, quite literally, to buy our way toward this glorious vision.

But is that what your Christmas usually looks like?

For many of us, reality is far removed from the glossy, catalogue images and sweet Christmas movie story arcs. Instead of glory, the season often highlights grottiness—messy family dynamics, absent loved ones, or unmet expectations.

Here’s the good news: grottiness is nothing new at Christmas. The very first Christmas was a gritty, real-world scene, far from the sanitized versions we imagine. Jesus was not born into wealth or comfort but into a dirty, smelly stable. His first visitors weren’t dignitaries or royalty but shepherds—men on the fringes of society, considered rough, unclean, and untrustworthy. These were men of the fields, far removed from polite company.

Yet it was to these very shepherds that God’s true glory was revealed:
“An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified” (Luke 2:9).

In the midst of their grotty, ordinary lives, light, beauty, and glory broke through—not just any glory, but the glory of heaven itself. The angels announced the astonishing truth:
“Today in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord” (Luke 2:11).

The glorious One had come to a grotty world.

This is what makes Christmas so extraordinary—and so unlike the stories other religions tell. In most belief systems, the broken, the messy, and the imperfect must strive to reach the glorious. Humanity must work to bridge the gap to the divine through good deeds or spiritual effort. The common thread in human religion is the urge to strive toward God. It takes shape in moral posturing, self-righteous efforts to prove our own worth, or any form of striving to bridge the gap through our own performance. This is the sinful human instinct—to cloak ourselves in self-generated glory. But no self-initiated strategy can close the divide. The more we cling to our own righteousness, the further we separate ourselves from God.

But in Jesus, God turns everything upside down. The glorious One—God himself—comes to us. He does not wait for us to clean up our lives or fix our brokenness. Instead, God enters the mess, the grottiness, and the suffering of our world to save us.
“God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

The Christmas story illustrates this surprising truth: God hides himself in unlikely places. Not in glittering palaces or peaceful landscapes, but in a grotty stable surrounded by animals and shepherds. He is found in the faces of the vulnerable, the rejected, and the forgotten. In doing this, God actually reveals his true glory—a glory hidden under darkness.

This hiddenness of God is good news for us. It means there is no place so dark, no situation so messy, that God cannot reach us. Psalm 139 reminds us:
“Even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you” (Psalm 139:12).

Wherever we are—in disappointments, struggles, dashed expectations, and failures—God is there. His light breaks into our darkness. His grace meets us in our grottiness.

The call to repent is actually the call to stop hiding from God in our own glory and to face our grottiness—all the while trusting in his grace. This is possible because of the gospel. The gospel declares that the God of Christmas did something remarkable: He came to us. First, through an animal feed trough at Christmas, and later, through the agonizing and ignoble death of crucifixion at Easter. He endured the worst this world could offer. By his perfect love, he lived a perfectly meritorious life for you. That means he is present even when your life feels dark and messy.
“Nothing can ever separate us from God’s love” (Romans 8:38).

So, God finds you even when you think you are hidden. When you know yourself to be genuinely lost, when darkness surrounds you—in Jesus, God will always draw close and find you there.

This is the true glory of Christmas—a glory that flows from forgiveness and can only be understood through grace. God does not leave us to fix ourselves or to find our way to him. He comes to us in the grotty, broken, and imperfect places. Through his Son, Jesus Christ, he brings light, peace, and salvation.

The stable, the manger, and the cross remind us that God works where we least expect. Even in suffering, grief, and failure, his grace is at work.

This Christmas, let’s look beyond the glitter and idealized images. Let’s see God where he has promised to be—in the grotty places of life. Let’s recognize him in the faces of the vulnerable, the forgotten, and the hurting. And let’s remember: no matter how messy our lives may feel, God’s light shines in the darkness. His true glory is the glory of grace—breaking through to bring us the hope, peace, and joy we so desperately need.
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).