3 Lessons From Christmas In 2021
Waiting is the span of time between the promise and fulfillment.
If 2021 has brought any word into focus for us, it would be this: waiting. Periods of waiting weary our faculties, though. Isn’t this why O Holy Night sings:
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices
I don’t know what you are waiting for. It could be a spouse, a child, a conversion, a healing, no family drama, no more depression or anxiety, no more explosions in cities… no more pain or death.
We are all in that middle ground, the span of time between promise and the fulfillment, waiting on something, if not simply the return of Jesus and the end of this exhausting world. And so we look to the Christmas story and ask: What does the story of Christmas have to say to weary waiters?
1- Christmas reminds us that God is faithful to his promises
Go back with me to Genesis 3, the beginning of the Christmas story. Adam and Eve have just committed sin against God and the world has been fractured. Where there was once no pain, no weeping, and no anxiety, at the snap of a finger these dark intrusions entered into humanity. The world was now broken, painful, and in need of a savior.
Not only a savior from death and pain but from our own sin and separation from God. Now notice in Genesis 3:14 - “ The Lord God said to the serpent” - God is speaking to the serpent, and he says this:
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
Here in Genesis 3:15, we have the first promise of a savior. That the offspring of the woman, a child, Jesus, will come and crush Satan.
What is the span of time between Genesis 3:15 and Matthew 1:1 called? Waiting. The middle ground between promise and fulfillment. If we zoom out onto the metanarrative of Christmas we see a striking reality.
The Christmas story is a story of God’s faithfulness in the waiting. Think about the many stories of pain, struggle, wrestling, doubt, and redemption that litter the timeline between Genesis 3 and Matthew 1. This period of the Christmas story is screaming at us weary waiters in 2021: “He will do it. It may seem long. It may be confusing. Darkness will fall for a season. But God will come through for you.”
2- Christmas reminds us that God understands the darkness of waiting
“Jesus was born and then placed in a manger.” - The frequency with which we hear this during the holidays can numb us to one of the most beautiful realities of Christmas: Jesus came to earth as flesh.
Jesus felt emotions, pain, and sorrow. We see this in the story of Lazarus when Jesus weeps out of love and care for his friends. The incarnation is proof of the reality of God’s love for us in our pain.
God willingly subjected himself to the pain created because of the fall (Remember Genesis 3), so that we would not have to go through it alone. Jesus not only sought to understand but by stepping into our own sufferings via the incarnation he knows our pain intimately, as Isaiah 53 says: “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows”.
Jesus took on flesh so he could know! Because Jesus has personally gone through pain, sorrow, and grief. When we go to him in our own, he knows what we feel. He can sympathize and understand (Hebrews 4:15-16) because of the incarnation. As Jerry Sittser says:
The sovereign God came in Jesus Christ to suffer with us and to suffer for us. He descended deeper into the pit than we will ever know. His sovereignty did not protect him from loss. If anything, it led him to suffer loss for our sake. God is therefore not simply some distant being who controls the world by a mysterious power. God came all the way to us and lived among us… The God I know has experienced pain and therefore understands my pain. In Jesus I have felt God’s tears, trembled before his death on the cross, and witnessed the redemptive power of his suffering. The Incarnation means that God cares so much that he chose to become human and suffer loss, though he never had to.
GERALD LAWSON SITTSER, A GRACE DISGUISED: HOW THE SOUL GROWS THROUGH LOSS, EXPANDED ED. (GRAND RAPIDS, MICH.: ZONDERVAN, ©2004), 157-158.
God is with us in the waiting.
3-Christmas reminds us that God will make all sad things come untrue
God’s promise in Genesis 3:15 seems quite simple, but packed into “He will crush your head, Satan” is a profound truth. Think about what this means. The one who introduced sin into the world, the one who tempts us away from God and seeks to destroy us, God will destroy.
Isn’t this a promise that He would fix all that was broken? Right every wrong? As Tim Keller says, “All things sad will become untrue.” There is a promise from God for your waiting season.
God has something to say to you when your family dies, and your house is empty because of COVID, and you have to live with chronic pain. It’s not that all things will be fixed on this side of heaven. Oh, I wish it would be. But perhaps this promise is a deeper one, a more needed one:
“I will be with you, I know what it is like, I see your tears and hear your cries. There will be a day I will fix this, but until then, I am with you.” Fulfillment of the promise is coming, and He is with us until then.
God is with us in it all
The order of the three above points is very intentional. They themselves are the three periods of waiting, go back and read the headlines. Promise, Waiting, Fulfillment. Christmas is a story about each of those stages. A reminder that God is with us in each phase of our journey. These days we find ourselves in the middle. We have our promise from God, and we know the fulfillment of all He has promised is ahead… but for now, we wait. And that waiting can be dark. It is wrought with many hard days and painful nights.
Our waiting seasons don’t always end like hallmark movies. I wish they did, that would make it a beautiful Christmas story, wouldn’t it? I have hope though, that God can meet us in that darkness, because the story of Christmas, of Jesus, is mixed with darkness, confusion, sadness, and waiting. It is realistic.
Think about how everyone felt when Jesus, the promised one, the one to save us from all that is wrong, died. In the death of Jesus Christ, hope seemed to be lost to darkness. But three days later, Jesus rose from the dead. The resurrection proved that Jesus defeated death. Death and suffering will not have the last say of the story.
Hope for dark holidays
The sun has set on this earth. Darkness surrounds us. We are in the shadows of suffering. COVID, explosions, loss, fear, tears, loneliness. We catch glimpses of light around the corners from time to time. But, one day, because of Jesus, the sun will rise again, and we will see the threads of our loss and pain, woven into a beautiful tapestry of God’s glory.
Your pain this holiday is not unseen by the Lord. Feel what you must feel. Cry the holiday tears. Grab hold of the promises we’ve outlined above. In His resurrection, all suffering and death were defeated. For now, we have his promises to comfort us in the shadows of waiting. But soon, we will hear with our own ears and feel on our own faces, the gentle hands of God, wiping away our tears—and the intercepting body of suffering being rolled away, like the stone from the tomb that held Jesus, allowing the light to finally shine uninterrupted and together we will hear,
A loud voice from the throne saying: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, and He will live with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away.” And the One seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”
Revelation 21:3-5
Worship While You Wait
This Christmas we sing, perhaps with more clarity than before: “A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices, For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn”.
We rejoice because Jesus came, though with tears because of this painful world.
First, we rejoice at God’s promise to fix all that is wrong and to wipe away our tears one day. Secondly, we rejoice because Christmas teaches us that God cared so deeply about our pain, he descended into it with us in Jesus. And third, we rejoice because we are reminded that there will come a day where in the twinkling of an eye, all will be made new.
C.S. Lewis, in his book The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe, describes Narnia as a place of “always winter, never Christmas”. This reflects the broken world we live in. But one day we will live in a land where “Christmas” will never end, and we will see it in its fullness like never before. Because we will be with Jesus in perfect peace, forever and ever.
Until that day, we faithfully wait. Immanuel, God is with us.
Marveling at these lessons from Christmas with you,
Josh.
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