Faith Firmly Rooted

As you ready your hearts for Christmas, let us not easily forget that Jesus Christ is central to our celebration.

Certainly, we know that Jesus was not born on December 25th.  Few people would ever make such an argument (and if they did, they'd be flat wrong!).  But it is at this time every year that we remember His coming.  We as Christians anticipate Him throughout the Christmas season via Advent and we long for His coming---both remembering His first coming on the 25th and ultimately looking to His future glorious second coming as well.

The Christmas holiday season is a great time of year (like Halloween as I mentioned before) to ask yourself a question....

• Does the way I celebrate Christmas bear the markings of something distinctively "Christian"?  

          OR

• Does the way that I celebrate Christmas (or even my Christianity) instead seem to have adopted all the trappings and accommodations of our contemporary culture leaving nary an inch for Christ?           

As you ponder that question, I'll leave you with a humorous story.  C.S. Lewis once pinpointed the marked difference between celebrating the birth of Christ and "all this ghastly [Christmas] racket at its lowest" with this story actually, so the credit for the laugh is his and not mine... Lewis wrote to a friend: "My brother heard a woman on a 'bus say, as the 'bus passed a church with a crib outside it, 'Oh Lor'!  They bring religion into everything.  Look--they're dragging it even into Christmas now!'"


Prayer: Lord, help us at this time of year to think of this season as we ought.  Help us to enjoy the time of rest, the time with family, the time of reflection, and let this all lead us ultimately to savor this time of year as a time of worship.  You are the cause of celebration for us this season and forever.  Amen.


-RCW


   
P.S. For some of my Southern Baptist friends who live somewhat in a bubble and legitimately do not know what "Advent" is, click here and you can see what the majority of the universal church in western culture does around the holiday season.  (That means what other Christians do who aren't Baptist....Yes, I do mean to tell you that there are a great many Christians who aren't Southern Baptist).   :)   I don't mean to poke fun....for I was certainly once very ignorant of these matters myself.        

P.P.S.  For my scholarly friends, the Lewis quote is from Letters to an American Lady (29 December 1958), p. 80.  The letter itself is housed in the Wade Center at Wheaton...an amazing place should you ever manage a visit.  I know how several of you (like myself) have a nasty distaste for quotes that lack a citation.

Have you ever thought about how much irony (or perhaps a better word is mystery) there is in Christian beliefs?

• We worship the One and Only Triune God. He is One and still being one, He is three.



• We believe that Jesus was 100% God and simultaneously 100% man. To sacrifice either one (His divinity or humanity) amounts to something non-Christian.



• We believe that mankind are created in the image of God, but somehow that image was "defaced but not erased" when mankind first sinned. Thus, humans--while being precious to God--are also deeply corrupt and innately capable of the most heinous evils.



• God in His sovereignty is distant, remote, unreachable, unfathomable, otherly, sitting high upon His throne. (Theologians call this His transcendence.) Yet He is also close, near, reachable, revealed, intimately acquainted with us, involved in our every day affairs. (Theologians call this His imminence.)


And these are just the tip of the iceberg.

The pinnacle of ironies is truly this last one -- That God Himself, Almighty Sovereign of the universe with all power, all knowledge, and all wisdom would stoop down to live among us and reveal Himself to us. He could have simply appeared in all His glory and conquered the entire world. Indeed, this is the type of earthly king that some of His closest contemporaries expected Him to be. He could have "Lorded His authority over us" as most human leaders and rulers do. Why, if God had seen fit, He could have been a wealthy 21st century executive living in a swanky New York condo!

This of course was not the plan. Instead, God Himself took on human flesh (the concept theologians call the Incarnation). He came to earth in one of the most destitute lands at one of the more primitive times in history. Nobody had room for His parents to even bring Him into the world, so the birth that was announced to mere shepherds and foretold by the prophets instead took place in a stable for livestock. His mother laid Him in a feeding trough. Then the family fled to Egypt so that He wouldn't be killed.

A beautiful irony, it is Jesus' birth we celebrate - most precious of gifts, most holy of Kings.

-RCW