We live in a world where we see glimpses of beauty and love, but it is contrasted by shades of darkness and evil. We can see the potential of people to do good, while seeing the potential for doing awful things, and the sin that lives in each one of us. So where is God, when tragedy strikes? Where is God our creator and savior, when life is a raging storm and full of despair? Friends, that is exactly what I'm reflecting on as we get closer to Christmas, the day that we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.
Christmas is the one thing central to Christianity that no other religion has. It is about God himself coming down into our world and entering into our pain and suffering, so that we might know the depth of his goodness and love for us. The old testament has many prophecies that pointed ahead to Jesus, and he was the only one who could fulfill all of them. One of the most beautiful and telling ones is Isaiah 53, often referred to as "the suffering servant:"
"He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But 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 53:3-5 NIV.
Perhaps one of the hardest things that we could try and wrap our human minds around is how an eternal God, who is holy and perfect, could enter into a human body and experience pain, suffering, and even death that exists in our world. The Bible testifies to this being true, and it is the reason that Christmas should give us so much hope, no matter what is going on within our lives. God is not so far removed from our lives that he has no idea what we're going through, on the contrary, Isaiah says he was "familiar with pain," to say the least, because he experienced all of the heartache and tragedy that many of us go through. Why did he do this for us? He endured the worst things of this world to bring us peace that surpasses human understanding, and everlasting hope that is able to get us through the worst storms of life. He proved all of this when he was born, eventually crucified, but ultimately rising from the dead, proving his power and authority over death.
So where is your hope this Christmas? For many, life may be full of heartache, bad news, disasters, and tragedy, but Christmas reminds us of the eternal peace and confidence that we have in Jesus Christ. There is a beautiful picture of this in the gospels when Jesus is sleeping in a boat in the middle of a raging storm when his followers are in full panic mode, fearing for their lives:
"Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!” He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm," Matthew 8:24-26 NIV.
When we place our faith in Jesus Christ, it doesn't guarantee that our lives will be free from trials and storms. On the contrary, I believe this example in the gospels was a living parable of what life looks like when we follow him. Sometimes the storms will rage on around us, but Jesus Christ is the rock upon which we place our hope and faith, and we can be assured of his presence with us even in the midst of those storms. We may cry out to him, "God where are you?!" But he reminds us that he is with us always, even if we think he's sleeping on the job, we can be assured that he has never left, and he fully understands what we are going through. We can completely trust in him, even though we don't understand why we have to experience the storms sometimes. This is the hope that Christmas reminds us that we have in our savior, Jesus Christ.
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