As we take down the Christmas lights and carefully put them in plastic boxes in the attic, don’t forget that somehow, next year, they’ll be tangled again. And so will your heart.

Christmas is the time of year to untangle it, to refocus and remember what life is about.

Untangling the heart is a messy business; it starts with clarifying what the heart thinks of itself.

Christmas says the world is infested with thorns, sins, and sorrows and attributes all that to a curse spread over all of creation, including us and our hearts.

As the year goes on, as time progresses, we throw this truth out, assuming everything is basically okay—that there is no curse.

Christmas is the good news, the celebration of Joy coming to the earth in the form of a Savior who has come, out of the wonder of His love, to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found.

Which is why the true celebration of Christmas is only as joyful as it is humbling.

It’s the message that we are worse off than we could ever imagine—there is a curse!—but more loved than we ever dared hope—the King has come!

Heaven and nature both sing at this news, that the Lord of the earth has come. Earth receives her King, readily, happily, joyfully.

But it is the duty of every heart to prepare Him room.

That preparation is what we spend the year doing.

It is what we do when we wake up, lie down, sit down, or walk around. Whatever we do, we do in light of Christmas, otherwise we remain outside of His loving care.

He cares for the world, ruling it with the wonders of His love, but He is often misrepresented.

The King is often presented as a tyrant, an abusive parent, an impotent old man. By us humans He is presented this way.

However, simultaneously, the fields, floods, rocks, hills, and plains, are repeating the sounding joy, repeating the sounding joy that is echoing, echoing from the glory of His righteousness.

The lights may be coming down, but the true light is just getting started. For the next year, before we settle down again to enjoy the fruits of His loving Kingdom, we have work to do.

If He has come to spread His love far as the curse is found, it only makes sense that we would do the same.

Our first priority, in 2021, should be this.

We are worse off than we ever could imagine and more loved than we ever dared hope.

If that doesn’t untangle the heart, nothing will.