As
we get older and as people come in and out of our lives, our rhythms and patterns fluctuate, and we’re never really the same person from year to year.
Adults,
think back to when you were children and how you celebrated Christmas with
innocence and perhaps a sense of naivety, how relatives would fill the house
and how smells of food and the cacophony of laughter and ruckus would linger for hours. Now bring yourself back to the present and think about how much life
has changed, fluctuated, the people who have left or gone to be with the
Lord and those people who are now in your life - spouses and children and grandchildren. You would have never imagined
all the details as they have played out.
Children,
cherish the joy this Christmas season brings. Truly spend time with your brothers
and sisters, give your parents and grandparents a kiss, tell people you love
them and laugh with great joy. Really remember and understand the true source
of the joy that comes into our world and lives this time of year.
Naturally,
this time of year conjures up a longing nostalgia of the past, an anticipation
of love in the present and a hope that it will all be sustained into the
future.
There’s
nothing wrong with that, it is the rituals and traditions of our lives that
help give us meaning and purpose to what we do and celebrate.
That
brings us to Christmas…
In
our lives, these fluxes and changes, the good times and bad are all revolved
around unchanging truths, facts and realities: joy, family, hope, friendship,
God, salvation…
For
so long, people of good will, people who genuinely wanted and desired the
fullness of God in their lives longed for this celebration we have every year.
For millennia, people who understood this incompletion of ourselves without
God, labored through life with little hope of anything more than an eternal
darkness. Now, finally, the invincible Lord Jesus has come into the world and
darkness will no longer have claim on our souls. The Lord has arrived on the
scene and an Epic Tale now commences! We are given, not merely a nice feeling,
but the substance of Salvation! From that day onward, humanity would be celebrating
the joy, hope and love of that great birth!
What
we do tonight, tomorrow and these days ahead is gather in love with family
and friends in carrying out this joyous victory of the birth when the King of
the Cosmos humbly was born in obscurity, but had a magnificent plan up his
sleeve!
The
people, environment, and circumstances of our lives change over time. Often we
get teary eyed as we get older and as we long for the nostalgia of days and people
past. But, we keep returning to this celebration each year in the hope that rests
in our hearts. We hope that the promises, realities, and love of Almighty God
may be realized again and again in our relationships with each other and
with the Lord and in our worship.
The
infant is alive and born into the depths of our hearts at Christmas. We
celebrate and gather every year in similar yet ever changing ways to recall
what never does change, to celebrate what we hope to see and grasp a little
better each time. Next year, we will be different. But what will always be the
same is the Lord Jesus who is born within the temples of our hearts and souls,
begging you to love Him and bring that love into all relationships and all
places you go.
Merry
Christmas!
