Christmas can be one of the most challenging seasons of all.
Often the Hollywood hype, the spotlights, and cued “action” are simply distractions
from the deeper truths of Christmas. We find ourselves conflicted between what
we believe should be true and the actual reality many of us are walking.
Hollywood tells us that Christmas is about gifts, it is about receiving. Oh, it
is also artfully billed to be about the beauty of GIVING, but if we probe
around a little, it is still really about the receiving; for now happiness,
contentment, or some sort of satisfaction is received from a gift well given or
a deed well done. Many Christians, myself included, adopt this same approach
and even teach it to our children. But Christmas is more.
Christmas is also about loss and for some of us the concept
of loss more purely resonates than the concept of the perfect gift during this
season. For with every gift there is a cost. As Christians we celebrate the
birth of Jesus, the perfect gift for the redemption of mankind. And there it
is. The loss. Jesus lost heaven, chose to walk away from his existence of perfect
and holy, to descend into the mess of humanity, the spiritual center ring, to
battle for our redemption. He took on a human body with human needs; emotional,
spiritual, and physical. Take just a moment and think of the loss each of those
needs has cost you. Seriously. Pause and reflect. Then ponder with heightened
understanding the mess that Jesus willingly, knowingly walked into. This mess
eventually lead to a cross where he unjustly lost his life. And because of his
choice to participate in this process, the tab for my sin and the rightful judgement
has also been lost to me. In this holy exchange, I am the eternal beneficiary.
I heard tell of birds that had come to be trapped in a
garage. Despite the mans best attempts to lead the birds, chase the birds,
somehow extract the birds from his garage, they were simply full of fear and
unable to escape. In desperation the man reflected that if he could become a
bird, he could tell them, he could show them his true intentions and lead them
to their freedom. And this is exactly what Christ did for you and for me.
God’s true heart for us is reflected by his efforts at Christmas.
He allowed his son to descend the ladder from heaven and into our midst to show
us his true intentions and to lead us to freedom. Christmas is about God’s
undeniable, unconditional love. Luke 15:11-32 also speaks to the heart of God the
Father as it is reflected toward each of us, his prodigal children. “So he (the prodigal) returned home to his father. And while he was
still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and
compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him.” These were
not the dignified actions becoming the patriarch; running, embracing, and
then kissing his public humiliation of a son. Yet this was the father’s response to seeing
his child from a long way off. How much better is God’s vision than this
earthly father’s? How perfectly can he see the slightest inclination of our
heart in his direction?
You are a prodigal or you know a prodigal. Some prodigals wear
that title like a badge of honor. Others of us have arrived there inadvertently.
But a prodigal is a prodigal, and truth be told, to the degree that we are
ready to admit it, we all have a degree of prodigal within us. It is for this
very reason that the iconic parable resonates within each of our hearts. We
run, we believe lies from the enemy, we repeat them to ourselves like a mantra
of “truth,” but his light shines brighter than the Bethlehem star. Even when we
turn our backs to run, to search for our own solutions to all of these problems
in life that just never stop coming, his light pursues, warming our backs,
beckoning us to simply turn in his direction.
Perhaps you believe you don’t even have the strength to turn.
The effort of turning into Jesus may take the last of your remaining strength,
but do you trust his heart for you enough to make that one movement? Fall to
your knees to get there if necessary. Once there, rest as you receive his all-encompassing
light, no longer tapping, no longer beckoning from behind you, but now wrapping
you in the arms of a father who has never stopped loving and is finally able to
hold the one who was before unable to receive his sincere affections. There is
no shadow in his presence. Receive his deeply saturating warmth, his love, his
acceptance.
Luke 17:11-19 tells the story of the ten lepers healed by
Jesus. Of the ten, one returned to give him thanks. As a freed bird, my
offering of thanks is to return to other prodigals and sing for them of the Truth
of his freedom. There are not one hundred steps to being right with God, there
is only one. There is nothing sweeter, no better Christmas gift to receive.
Just turn. Look in his direction. Believe me when I say you can trust that he
will do the rest.
Captured
Not for a Moment
Captured
Not for a Moment
