Beyond the Familiar

If you're like me, it's your last day in the office, and every organization you've ever supported, partnered with, or visited online is flooding your inbox with holiday emails. So, why would you take the time to read this one?

Sometimes, messages become all too familiar. Familiarity breeds comfort, boredom, and in some cases, even contempt.

For those of us who’ve lived through many holiday seasons in the United States, we can easily respond to the familiarity of the season with those same emotions. These responses can even extend to the central narrative of Christmas.

So, what does it take to break out of the familiar and see something NEW? The narrative of the birth of Jesus is so rich and layered that there’s always something new to discover. If we reduce it to a commercialized image of a cute baby, we’ve likely missed the point.

For me, what overwhelms and resonates deeply is the idea that an all-powerful being chose to enter the realm of humanity in the very place where people are devalued, underestimated, and forgotten. Jesus chose to yield power and privilege in order to fully identify with those in such circumstances by entering the world as one of them.

This leads me to another layer of the story that fills me with awe. Often, we think of Jesus’s birth as a symbol of solidarity with those who are poor, transient, neglected, or rejected. By solidarity, I don’t just mean responding charitably to others' poverty, but having the willingness to sacrifice and experience those realities for oneself.

But more than that, if you zoom out slightly to consider the other key characters in the story, I believe Jesus was making a new proclamation about how the world should be. He wasn’t merely offering solidarity; he was calling out the true identity of the people and places that society had cast aside. He was calling them good, worthy of value and honor. The very fact that shepherds, a teen mom, an ordinary Jewish father, and the rich and powerful Magi all came together on equal ground in a humble place in unity is highly symbolic.

This is the true and ultimate reality: that we’re all part of something bigger… connected. This is the world as it was always meant to be.

At Think Tank, we have the privilege of co-creating more of this kind of world, even if we don’t always get to see it fully realized. It’s often difficult to put our mission into words, because words seem to fall short. This is why we need stories. Thank you to all who have shared your stories with us this year, illuminating hope, redemption, and humanity.

May you find something new and unexpected this season, inviting you into a greater longing toward this gift of love and hope given to us.

Marlo Fox is the Executive Director for Think Tank Inc. To learn more about Think Tank’s work, visit thinktank-inc.org.