John 3:16
“For God so love the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
One Christmas I had a date. My wife, wanted to attend a musical show, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. I was apprehensive. The apprehension seemed well-founded when we arrived and saw 12,000 people streaming in. I had to watch closely to see anyone with grey hair, let alone my age.
Actually, it proved to be the most spectacular light show I’ve ever seen, combined with marvelous music and dance. But what startled me was to find the story they were telling – it was the Christmas story! But the focus of their story would have indeed pleased any Christmas Coalition. They focused on becoming like the story of one born so long ago — the one who cared about the hurting.
What are we celebrating? The wedding of a prince? Like a king-in-waiting at Buckingham palace? No, our celebrant was born in a cowbarn. He was homeless most of his last years on earth, a friend of the poor, the sick, the oppressed, the bad guys. He was unjustly accused and illegally convicted. For what? The crime of embracing the whole world of sinners? He died in public disgrace, hanging naked, nailed to a cross, a death reserved for the most evil of criminals.
Him we celebrate at this season.
And many of you — praise be to God! — celebrate by investing a significant part of your own lives in the very people He cared about so deeply.
Kent was so burdened for the least and lost that he moved to the gates of hell, Calcutta. There he lived in a tiny room, about 10 feet square, slept on a mat on the concrete floor. He had to make room for the cottage industry he was launching for his neighbors. A bucket for a kitchen/bathroom sink, a hole in the ground for a toilet, a single gas burner to cook. That was my son, and other unknown Mother Theresas giving in the most desperate parts of earth. And what about me? I stand convicted of a callus heart and ask God to unleash his love through me. If he does that in me—and in you—how would he go about it? Two ways, I think.
He created us in his own likeness, God-compatible. Why did he create such a being as us? God is love, that’s why. And in love he climaxed his creative activity with a being who could love him back. Lovers to be truly one must be compatible. So he created us that way. But that wasn’t his only purpose. One purpose of making us on his pattern is to enable us to join him in loving the world of hurting people. So we try to behave in a God-like way toward the homeless, the ill.
But we fall short. So he went into creative action again. And that’s the Christmas story. God himself invading our humanity. Since we chose to go our own way, which all too often isn’t God’s way, he planned a re-hab program, a plan to re-create us more and more into his Son’s likeness. And that’s the second part of his plan.
The Holy Spirit wants to invade OUR bodies as he did Mary’s. Do you remember the Christmas carol, “O holy Child of Bethlehem! Descend to us, we pray, cast out our sin and enter in; Be born is us today.” He wants to give us life. Born AGAIN, is the way Jesus put it on one occasion! A fresh start, not just our bodies, life eternal for our inner selves.
So at this season of the year, let us celebrate life—Jesus’ life. And OURS! And then through the new me, the new you, he wants to flow life to the hurting, poor, dispossessed in your country, and into to the whole world he loves. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish…”