“Praise the Lord, O my soul,

O Lord my God, You are very great;

you are clothed with splendor and majesty.

He wraps himself in light as with a garment.”

Psalm 104:1-2

I love this time of year…….the anticipation, the decorations, the lights and the songs of the season. This past weekend, as a family, we decorated our Christmas tree, wrapping it with hundreds of tiny white lights. This morning, I woke early before the sun came up and turned on the lights of the tree. I grabbed some coffee and sat to quietly reflect on the coming advent season. My gaze turned from the tree and I opened my Bible to read Psalm 104:1-2 where the Psalmist paints a description of the Lord our God, clothed in splendor and majesty, wrapped in a garment of light. What a beautiful description of our King.

Splendor and majesty remind us of royalty. In Isaiah 6:1, the prophet Isaiah saw the Lord in all His majestic holiness, seated on His royal throne, the train of His robe cascaded down around the throne and filled the entire throne room. The glory of his vision prompted Isaiah to fall on his face before the Lord.

The scene painted in Luke 2:6-7 is very different. There, we see the King of Kings, the one formerly adorned with splendor and majesty, now enter life on earth as an infant, born into poverty, and clothed in rags. The difference between the two descriptions is startling. I know that we know, but – it’s so easy to forget, He left all the opulence and grandeur. He lay aside His majesty and splendor and instead, “made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant…..he humbled himself.” (Philippians 2:7) He came as fully God, but also fully man, so that He could embrace us in our brokenness.

It’s so very foreign isn’t it? We try to make ourselves something. We try to clothe ourselves in garments that make us look better than we really are. We wear garments of achievement, importance, titles, or degrees. None of those are wrong unless, we are trying to find our significance in them. Jesus, on the other hand, stripped off the splendor and majesty, and came as a baby; nothing to prove, nothing to show, simply secure in His Father’s love. He came that we too might experience the Father’s love. and in that love, find our significance.

A good question to ask this Christmas is, “In what am I finding my significance?”