Always winter, never Christmas

Scripture for the day: 1 Peter 1:3-5 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Thought for the day: Let’s play “what if” for a moment. What if there had never been a Christmas? How do you think things might have been different?

C. S. Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia to explain what it means to be a Christian to children. The Chronicles are a great series of book and I recommend them to you. Now, in “The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe,” the author provides the setting for the rest of the books. Mr. Tumnus, the Faun, explains to Lucy why it’s so cold and dark in his world. Narnia was once a land of summer, with dancing, joy and music everywhere. The White Witch now ruled, though she was not the rightful ruler of Narnia. The result was that “It’s always winter, but never Christmas.”

What a horrible thought! No trees, no gifts, no cookies, or Grinch or Rudolph or even Clarence. Without Christmas we would have no Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, or Cyber Monday. I fear we would run about associating our lives with that of George Bailey, wishing we’d never been born. Yes, I know of the happy ending when George discovers the difference he’s been making all those seemingly lost years. But, what if ….?

What if there were no Christ child, no manger, no carols, no “Greatest Story Ever Told?” What if there had been no teaching, no miracles, no dying, no rising again? What if, when we came to the shortest day of the year and began looking forward to the days getting longer once again, that never happened? In short, what if there were no hope? Martin Luther King Jr. said, “If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all.” And that’s the way of the world without Christmas, without the Christ.

And therein lies the problem. The world has put her hope in everything other than the Christ. Evolution says we’re nothing more than animals and we have the same ending as the animals. Technology has pulled us apart rather than bringing us closer together. Politics; well, we all know how well that avenue has worked out. Our self-determination, though valuable, can only take us so far. By placing our hope in any of these false gods, we end up right where we never wanted to be; a place where it’s “always winter but never Christmas.”

The good news is that, just as in Narnia, there is still hope. The White Witch, Satan, has been on the throne of the world, bringing about darkness and cold without end and without hope. But somewhere in the background stands Aslan, the Lion. He awaits his time to engage in the greatest battle ever fought, the battle between good and evil, the battle for the freedom of all those held in bondage. Narnia was a land where it was always winter but it was not a land without hope.

Far too many these days feel as if the world is without hope; cold, dark, gloomy, full of despair. But the Christmas story tells me that no matter the darkness that seems to surround us, no matter the cold that threatens to grip our hearts, the Savior has come and an eternal spring is just around the corner.

The Bible says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). “To those who receive Him, to them he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12). “Christ suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit” (I Peter 3:18).

Ladies and Gentlemen, don’t let the angel of light, the prince of the power of the air, the enemy of your soul, keep you in bondage this year! Don’t allow him to blind you any longer to the hope and the life that is available to you through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ – don’t allow yourself to go through another winter without experiencing Christmas!

Now go take on your world. - Bill