A Believer's Christmas

The Impact

Hardly anything changed. Hardly anything changed immediately, anyway. The Romans still ruled. The tax collectors still robbed people. The Pharisees still preached a hollow religion. The farmers still barely scratched a living from the rocky soil. The shepherds’ standard of living was still the same as the sheep they tended. The lepers were still shunned and excluded by society. Enemies still hated enemies. It was still a struggle to love God and other people.

Hardly anything changed, at first. Hardly anything changed when the heavy air in the stable was cut by a baby’s cry. Judea did not know that the meaning of its life had changed with a birth. The world did not know that it could hope again because Mary and Joseph had a son. Thirty years would pass from that birth day, a generation would die before it became clear that God and humanity were conversing again like in the garden of Paradise. A few more years would pass before people realized that someone loved them enough to die for them. More time would pass still before others were convinced that the same Spirit that animated this new-born child could energize their lives.

Hardly anything changed, at first. “At first,” because things did begin to change: sometimes quickly and dramatically but most of the time so slowly that it was hardly noticeable. A time would come when some crooked tax collectors would have a change of heart and become honest. A day would come when poor farmers and lowly shepherds would be told by a man that the way they cared for their crops and flocks was the way God cared for His people. A time would come when lepers, whose greatest pain was the loneliness of outcasts, would be welcomed and embraced and healed by someone who loved them. The day would come when people who found it difficult to believe in God or relate to Him would find him close at hand as one like themselves. The time would even come when the Romans would no longer rule; in fact, as the generations and centuries passed, other empires and powers would come and go and it would become clear that what would always remain would be a people for whom a man from Nazareth gave his life. All of this and more would happen, but hardly anything changed at first, that night when Jesus was born.

Is it so different for us in our own Christmases? We gather to celebrate the fact that Jesus is born, that He is alive in our midst, but will anything change radically as a result of this celebration? On Christmas morning, we wake up proclaiming Jesus’ birth, but, really, not much will change. Our worlds will still be pretty much the same; hardly anything will change at all.

Does this mean that Christmas is a holy day without effect? Does this mean our celebration has no lasting value? Does this mean that Jesus’ birth makes no real difference in our lives, that it is just a pleasant day standing out from all the rest by its festivity?

I think not. I think not because the same process of renewal that happened to the farmers and shepherds and lepers and tax collectors and Romans, that started with the birth of a child in an obscure village called Bethlehem, will happen to us. We will be changed. This world will be renewed. Maybe not tomorrow; maybe not the next day, but some day, some day, because Jesus is born. God has wedded Himself to us.

We will be changed. We cannot be afraid to hope for that. We will become more patient, more generous, more caring, more self-sacrificing people, and it starts when we say, “Jesus is alive. He is born in this world and He is alive for me.”

The world will be renewed. It will become a place in which all people can have shelter and enough to eat, and where people can live in peace, and it starts when we say, “Jesus is born. He is alive for this world.”

Because God’s son took on human nature, nothing can remain the same; there will be change, there will be renewal. That is the promise of Christmas, and the promise will come true if we dare to hope in it and believe in the power of God to save us through Jesus Christ. At Christmastime, more than any other time, do not be afraid to hope, for yourself and for your world, and don’t be afraid to believe, to believe in the power of God who sent His only Son so that all who believe in Him might be saved.