Merry Christmas to all of you out there! I hope and pray that today, and the year ahead, may be filled with love, peace, and hope for the future. Christmas can be an uplifting and energizing time of year for many, and it can also be a time of heartache and even depression for others, depending on what your life circumstances have been up to this point. Regardless of where we are at individually, I believe we can choose to reflect on what the hope of Christmas means for us all and why we can choose to have joy, even if we are not experiencing a life of happiness at the moment.
So what is the hope of Christmas? Isaiah 8-9 paints a beautiful picture of Christmas hope in my opinion, by looking at darkness and light, as it points forward in prophecy to the savior Jesus that will be born several hundred years later. Before we can understand our need for a savior, we need to first understand the darkness that is very present in this world and affects us all. Once we can see how dark the world can truly be, we can finally see the beauty of the light that God has sent into the world, and the deep longing and need for that light that is part of our human nature. Isaiah 9:2 says "The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned," again pointing forward to Jesus. It goes on to describe the effects of this light as increasing the nation's joy, removing a burdensome yoke, and bringing peace, before directly pointing to the future birth of Christ in this context by saying "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6 NIV).
I think in a general sense, most people have always been able to look at the world and acknowledge the effects of sin and evil, agreeing that things just aren't quite right, and there is a sense of injustice with much that happens here. Who do we look to blame for the presence of evil in our world though? This is a much deeper question, and one that many will struggle to answer. For those that refuse to take any personal ownership of this problem, they will tend to point the finger at everything and everyone else as the cause of evil and suffering. I believe the bible is clear from cover to cover on this though, evil is present in our world because of the sin that exists in each of one of us. Jeremiah 17:9 says "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" In the book of Romans, Paul wrote "For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing," (Romans 7:18-19 NIV). In essence, sin is the source of all evil, and evil is the source of the darkness in this world, and we all at times choose to walk in that darkness and go our own way, away from God. God is perfect, just, holy, and without sin, so since we know that we "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23 NIV), how can we possibly be with God when we have at times willingly participated in those very things that prevent us from being in His presence? Where is hope?
"You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us," (Romans 5:6-8 NIV). We are positioned at a unique point in human history where we are looking backwards on biblical history. This allows us to view the gift of Jesus Christ differently since we also know the story of Easter, and that he proved that he was who he said he was by overcoming death on a cross, and rising on the third day to defeat the powers of death and evil in this world. Jesus is our living hope, and our way to be with God, for he himself said “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Jesus himself makes this possible by paying for our sin, and accounting for the evil and suffering that we have willingly brought into this world, because "...he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed," (Isaiah 53:5 NIV).
Being a Christian involves a challenging paradox, one of believing in the hope we have in Jesus, yet while living in a world where we are all broken and full of sin in our own ways, and seeing the effects of this play out in a world full of evil and suffering. We are still living in a world that sees the effects of the darkness of evil, but if that is all we choose to see, we will have missed out on what Jesus meant when he said “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life,” (John 8:12 NIV). Jesus was pointing back to Isaiah 9:2, identifying himself as that very light in the land of darkness that is our world. So as we all go through this Christmas season with a different set of life circumstances, some happy and some sad, we can choose joy, because of the hope we have in Jesus Christ. It is remarkable that even though Jesus fully knew of the life of sorrow he would lead while living in our world, and the excruciating death on a cross he would experience, the bible says "For the joy set before him he endured the cross." This joy is available to all of us, it is not the same as happiness, for happiness is often temporary and subject to our unique situations in life. The gift of Christ is available to each one of us not just this Christmas, but every day we have breath in our lungs. Take hold of the gift of Jesus, "And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus," (Philippians 4:7 NIV). Merry Christmas.
