photo credit: AP
How can it be? How can this season of
Christmas, this season that most will see as a busy, fun-filled month
long party, complete with gifts and new dresses and dinner and
drinks; but this season that is most sacred to us as believers, how
can this season continue to echo with death, and evil, and loss, and
agony? Why would God allow these school killings, these bombings,
these asinine US political wimps to reign supreme in our minds and on
our tvs and in our newspapers? Why not another time of year? Why
not let this season of celebration of Jesus' birth from eternity be
it for us? Wouldn't it be easier for our hearts to be GLAD and set
on our Savior who came to earth, Emmanuel, God with us, thousands of
years ago in a little stable ? Wouldn't that help...and maybe help
not just us as Christians, but maybe it would paint a pretty enough
picture to even woo unbelievers?
photo credit:
UGGH. I guess not. See, when I was
reading a British news article about the recent school attack in
Peshawar, Pakistan, and saw the faces of the Taliban men sitting,
weapons in hand, prepared for their mission to slaughter babies,
children...I just lost it. There is nothing beautiful about them.
There is nothing heroic about them, and yet there are people out
there who somehow think they are both of those things. They fund
these things, they encourage these things. It is not just these
smaller groups of suicide bombers and militants that are deceived, it
is so much bigger than that. So much greater than that, so much so
that I don't even know...couldn't even guess. But when I cry and
mourn for these little people who were created in the image of God,
and for their parents who will forever have these memories and an
empty seat at their tables, my heart is reminded that we were not far off from this own evil ourselves.
We were once enemies of God,
children of wrath. Not apathetic towards God like I like to
describe my pre-conversion self. But enemies. Full of wrath. Our
hearts were deceitful and wicked above ALL things. Even our wisdom
was foolishness to God. As an enemy of God, is there anything we
couldn't have done? I mean really? Is there any sin too heinous?
Good moralist that many of us are, it's nice and comforting to think,
“of course there are sins that are too terrible, that even I, as an
unrepentant, blinded-to-my-own-sin-self would never have dared to
commit. Surely there was enough goodness in me somewhere to hold
back from brutally killing children, from rape, from beheading
someone. SURELY.” But guys, I cry now because there was not
“enough” goodness in me. There was no goodness in me...I didn't
inherit any from my parents from long ago, Adam and Eve. I had no
chance. I was without hope. I followed the “prince of the power of
the air”...that's Satan. There was enough evil in my heart to do
any of those things and even more. I could have been any of those
murderers. That could have been me.
But now, (thank you Jesus that it didn't end there!) we have been brought near
by the blood of Christ (Eph. 2: 13)
By the great love of God and His always abounding, never ending
grace, I am not an enemy of God. For the purpose of God's own glory,
He called me out of a life of darkness that I didn't even know I was
living in, and gave me eyes to see and ears to hear and He called me
his daughter. He changed my wicked, deceitful heart into a heart
like Jesus'. Praise be to God that I am not deceived anymore!
So,
how can this season of great joy continue to echo with death and
evil? Because we are not just celebrating Jesus' entrance into this
world to regenerate our ugly hearts, but we are anticipating
Him returning (come, Lord Jesus
SOON!) to finish and to conquer and to make right all of this that is
so wrong right now. If I hadn't been so engulfed in all of this
heart wrenching news lately, I don't know that I would be before the
throne of God so often this month. I don't know that I would be
petitioning God for my own family so much. I don't know that I would
be crying out for the other part of Advent...the future part, the
part not yet fully realized. I don't know that I would be reminded
so often of what Jesus' birth meant for me, that I am no longer an
enemy, but a fellow heir with Christ because I am now part of a
single,eternal Family.
So
please, Jesus, please. Return. But while we're waiting, please keep
our hearts and our minds filled with your Spirit and your truth, and
let every hard thing be a means to mobilize us as Your hands and feet
here on earth to work for Your Kingdom, and to pray for the poor and
broken and utterly crushed. And please, open blind eyes and unstop
deaf ears, not just here, and not just “over there”, but all over
Your creation. Amen.
*Most
of my paraphrase here came from Romans 5 or Ephesians 2
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