The Clipboard
Every night, sometime between dinner and bedtime, our family usually performs what we call a “Clean Sweep.” Our kids know at this point that Clean Sweep is where we simply do a family-wide pickup around the house. My wife and I have six kids. Eight people living under the same roof can create a messy house very quickly, so we use this as an “all hands on deck” time where everyone pitches in, takes a room, and cleans up all of the clutter. It’s not a deep-clean, just a general pickup to restore each room to looking as it should. As you can imagine, not every child is always as eager as my wife or me to perform "clean sweep."
However, this past Monday night, my eight-year-old Brandon asked me if he could "carry the clipboard.” I knew what he was asking. We have this old clipboard that the kids dug out of a closet a few weeks ago, and they started a game: whoever has the clipboard has “the power.” When they are playing games together, whoever has the clipboard makes the rules. When I see this happen, I usually just let it happen in order to watch them to see how each of them wields that power differently, at least until it gets out of hand. Somehow, my ten-year-old Julia ends up with the clipboard more than often, but on Monday night, Brandon remembered it first and asked if he could have it during clean sweep. Because I was curious about his motives, I said yes.
I was grateful to see him go from room to room, silently nodding as he marked a blank piece of paper on the clipboard with a pencil, as if checking off a checklist, ensuring that everything was done in the room that was on his imaginary list. There was no demeaning attitude towards the other person cleaning the room, or any “love of power” that I could detect. In the past, I have seen a few of the other children wield that “clipboard power" much more fiercely and shrewdly than he did on Monday night.
The next morning as I had some time to think, with our home decorated for Christmas, I couldn’t help but connect what I had observed the night before with what I know about what we celebrate this season: the coming of the Savior. The Gospel writer Matthew reminds the reader of the words of the prophet Isaiah, "The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel (which means “God with us”).” (Matthew 1:23)
Never before had God chosen to be, dwell, and live with His human creation.
You see, He has the clipboard. He always has. In fact, many times God gets a bad rap for what we see in the Bible. So often in what we call the Old Testament, on the surface it seems as though God waits for His people to mess up, and then whacks them on hand when they do.
But in the Christmas story, we see the true character of God. This God that has always had the clipboard - always had the power - chose to leave the riches of heaven and show up on earth in the form of a fragile, vulnerable baby.
Instead of lording over His subjects, He chose to be Lord with His subjects: “God with us.” This is the true character of God.
There are many things that we can't pretend to understand about the Creator. We ask questions like, "Why did He allow this to happen, or that to happen?" But then we remember that in the Christmas story, and many times over, before and after, He reveals Himself to be a God that desires to be with us - to be personal with us. That alone looks past those questions and gives the most meaningful answer - that He cares for us enough to be there with us when it happens.
His desire is to be personal with us. How inspiring, that the Creator of the universe, the big Boss, God, wants a personal relationship with you and me.
May you and your family during this season find peace in the knowledge that this is the type of God that calls you into a relationship with Him. And may you make room in your heart for Him, perhaps for the first time, or for the first time in a long time.
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." John 3:16-17