Love makes a promise to me and you, Christmas makes everything new.
Christmas changes everything.
Christmas divides time into BC and AD – “Anno Domini.” “The year of our Lord.”
Christmas changed how we spell God – “E-M-M-A-N-U-E-L” – “God is with us.”
Broken relationships, broken hearts, and broken dreams can be restored because of Christmas.
Christmas introduces a new way of knowing God.
Christmas is the answer to the quandary of a man who told me, “For me, God is a big entity somewhere out there. He is neither personal, nor caring, nor loving. Never has been. At least not for me. How do I shed a harsh image of God? This is the only God I know. I can’t seem to find the loving God some speak of.”
Christmas shatters any idea that God is some kind of vengeful tyrant. The image of a harsh, punishing deity is contradicted when we discover that God was incarnated in a baby in Bethlehem’s manger.
God changed places.
Heaven came to earth.
God became man.
Infinity squeezed into a finite form.
The eternal became bound by time.
The invincible became vulnerable.
God came to our neighbourhood.
God became man because authenticity cannot be observed from a distance.
In 1999 I met Prime Minister Jean Chretien in his neighbourhood in Ottawa, but he’s never come to my neighbourhood.
In 1994 I met Mark Messier in the Edmonton Oiler’s dressing room, but he’s never come to my neighbourhood.
God came to our neighbourhood.
Why? Because authenticity cannot be observed from a distance.
The incarnation is about power and love.
What we realize with the birth of Jesus is that God is a loving God who was willing to give up power in order to express His love.
At Christmas we are reminded that the same God who had the power to toss the galaxies into outer space and set electrons spinning in inner space loved us enough to set aside all that power in order to show that love.
The good news is that 2,000 years ago, God showed us His love by emptying Himself of power and coming into the world as a vulnerable infant child.
“For all that’s been broken
For all that’s best lost
Every road that we’ve taken at too high a cost
For all of our longing for what might have been
Christmas makes everything new.
Love makes a promise to me and you
Christmas makes everything new.”
The scandalous declaration of Christmas is that the Bethlehem child is none other than the creator God.
From Bethlehem to Jerusalem, we learn that God is not a condemning God, but a friend to the broken.
“There is therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” Romans 8:1
Christmas makes everything new!
Jesus is all the proof needed that in His love, there can be peace on earth and good will for you.
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