I posted this five years ago in Facebook. Today it popped up as a Facebook memory. I read it and thought, “I needed that.” Maybe you do too. In these times, which “seriously troubled” barely describes, it reminds me where my faith, my heart, and my loyalty lie: with a King and a kingdom that stand above the ragings and posturings of world governments and clashing worldviews, and with a gospel that can heal and redirect human hearts as nothing else can.
Thank you, Jesus, for coming to us as our Savior and giving us eternal life in you. Thank you that you are the One supreme ruler who deserves to have all power and our undiluted fealty, for you alone see clearly and are trustworthy in both love and judgment. Come again soon as King of Kings. Maranatha, Lord Jesus.
Christmas Eve, 2014
A most blessed Christmas to all my friends who love Jesus.
To the rest of the world, or more specifically to those who take offense at the word “Christmas,” I feel like saying, “Merry Politically Correct Occasion,” or perhaps “Merry Grow a Skin Day.” But I’ll keep that sarcastic impulse to myself and between you and me. It does not originate from the heart of the Word made flesh, but from my own fleshy, pissy attitude. This is not a day for me to feed into the irresolvable arguments that characterize this season in postmillennial America, and to do so is to miss the very point of Christmas. Jesus was born into a world alienated from God not so that he could establish a holiday but in order to bring salvation, and that remains true today. He came precisely because this world was at odds with God.
“He who made the world came into the world, and the world did not recognize him. He came to the people he had chosen for a special relationship, and they rejected him. BUT…to as many as did receive him, he gave the privilege of being children of God–to those who stake their lives on his name” (John 1:10-12, my rendering).
The world that takes offense at calling this holiday Christmas is the same world God loved so deeply that he sent his Son on its behalf. Jesus didn’t expect gratitude in return–he expected a cross. And while I think he loves that we celebrate his incarnation with warm traditions, I also think that what he cares about, more than a holiday that his early followers never even observed, is that we prioritize what he prioritizes: loving, as best we know how, a world that needs us to embody his heart toward it, not our own indignation over today’s thin-skinned political correctness.
Let a pagan world celebrate what it wants as it chooses. To me, any such celebration is utterly hollow apart from him–for “in him was life, and the life was the light of men.” I am grateful to Jesus. What I wrote to one friend earlier today, I share with you all: that Christmas is about eternity gestated for nine months in a teenage girl’s womb; holiness born in an animal shed; omnipotence camouflaged in helplessness; and Life of an entirely different quality come to actively seek us out in the midst of the world’s darkness.
Thanks to our Lord, Jesus Christ, the living Word to whom all good words are due and whom no words can fully encompass.
Merry Christmas, my friends, brothers, and sisters.
Bob