The Hopes and Fears of All the Years

What a whirlwind the past few weeks have been.  Not only are the holidays (which now apparently start in late October) crazy, but the national tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary has whipped an already polarized nation into a partisan frenzy.

There is something happening.  It happens all the time, but I’m more aware of it this year.  A numberless mass of peddlers is selling hope.  The hope may be placed in material things or legislation or armed guards, but everybody is trying to tell us what we need.  This is a testament to the fact that humanity is keenly and almost universally aware that we are incomplete.

Our depravity is not always so clearly highlighted as it was on December 14th in Connecticut, but it is always present.  It’s always lurking in the back of our minds where we don’t want to think about it.  We spend billions each year on self-help.  We nip and tuck and augment so that we look better. We hop from hobby to hobby (or substance to substance) trying to fill our time or numb our mind.  While the manifestations vary, the truth is that we are not who we want to be...individually, societally, or as a species.

Our fixes are often just as bad as our problems.  Hope in finances can drive us to greed, theft, or worse.  Hope in legislation leaves us ironically disappointed.  How could severely flawed men put forth anything but a flawed system that is misused and abused for power and money?  Hope in sex is so futile, it’s not even worth discussing.  Relationships always leave us wanting for the same reason that our legislative system leaves us frustrated.  You can’t throw together two imperfect people and get a perfect marriage (and even if you could, a perfect marriage would leave us wanting as well...just in other areas).  And when relationships go bad the damage left behind can be practically paralyzing for all involved.

This is the reason that we’re in such a frenzy.  We try.  We kick and scratch and claw to fill the void.  But no matter how much we try, we can’t do it.  We can’t make enough money to be okay.  We can’t pass enough laws to whip our society into shape.  We never find that perfect person who makes our life meaningful and easy all at the same time.  We’re treating the symptoms and not the problem...

Yet, in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light...

Our fallenness is the reason that Christmas is such a big deal.  By the grace of God we’ve come to recognize that our issue is that we are at odds with our Maker.  Because of our sin, it is impossible for us to please Him by our own work.  This impossibility could lead to despair and sorrow, but then the Word became flesh and dwelt among men. Our problem is so profound that only God’s Son could remedy it.  By becoming a man, he rightly pays for the sin of men and being divine, he’s actually able to make the payment!

That is our hope: Christ crucified to obtain an inheritance of nations. Our standing before a righteous God restored and even more than that, Christ is our advocate at the right hand of the Father to plead our case before Him!  God is for us!  Good news almost seems like an understatement.

It is this message that we go to great lengths to deliver.  It’s why we plant churches and send missionaries. It is our reason for living and breathing and working and dying. Paul sums it up quite well: And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.  For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.  And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

This Christmas let us pray that God would keep us focused on the cruciality of the incarnation.  May we be humbled that we haven’t come to trust in Christ through our own wisdom or discipline or effort, but by faith.  We love Him because He first loved us.  May we be humble bearers of the good news that sets the captives free, opens the eyes of the blind, and raises the lame to walk.  Even more than that, it turns stone hearts into flesh.  And, in time, it will vanquish evil and death.  Amen, come Lord Jesus!

Merry Christmas!

Soli Deo Gloria