Why isn't Christmas Christmas?

For a while now, I've had trouble with Christmas; with the tired old songs we sing every year, the same scenery, the same sermons. Last year I could chalk it up to just being out of it, but this year... I certainly recognize the importance of Christ's birth. God was born a human without original sin to the descendants of David, a legitimate contender to the throne of Israel had it existed then, as a child so he could experience the complete human experience. I'm thankful for that, but I'm thankful every day for that. This year, the thing that has stood out to me most about Jesus isn't His birth, His death, or His teaching, but his humanity; the idea that God came down and experienced 30 years of normal life as just-another-person as far as most were concerned so that He could fully understand what it is to be human; what it is to labor, what it is to struggle, what it is to be tempted, what it is to be kept awake past when you want to sleep, what it is to be nagged at. Perhaps the understanding that God understands us so completely, not just as an observer outside of time, but as a co-participant in life so blows my mind that the rest pales in comparison; I don't know, but I certainly hope I figure it out.

Two prayers are better than one

This morning in Sunday bible study, Jeff passed out slips of paper with subjects for the recipient to talk about briefly. I got "prayer request"; this evoked a negative emotion because I didn't really understand the why we should ask others to pray for us. I thought, "As long as I am God's child, He will hear me just as well as He will hear the two of us." As I thought about it I remembered the last time someone had asked me to pray for them, then how I prayed for them. Then, Hebrews 4:15 came to my mind:

"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin.

I remembered that one of the purposes of Christ's stay on Earth was to better understand the human existance so He can convey our prayers to the Father. I realized that how I pray for a situation is tainted by my life experiences and that my prayer probably won't be the same as another's, given that some of the situation is known; this is at least one reason why two prayers are better than one.