If God really has been born in a manger in Bethlehem, then we have something no other religion in world history has ever claimed. We belong to a God who truly and totally understands you. He gets you, from the inside of your experience. There’s no other religion that says God has suffered, that God had to be courageous, that God knows what it’s like to be abandoned by his friends, to be crushed by injustice, to be tortured and to die. Christmas shows us that God knows exactly what you’re going through. When you talk to God in Christ, yes, he totally understands.
Dorothy Sayers, a contemporary of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, wrote this in the 1950s:
“The Incarnation means that God himself has gone through the whole of human experience–from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. He was born in poverty and suffered infinite pain–all for us–and thought it well worth his while.”
God taking on our everyday human condition is the means of our salvation. God reclaims us as his own by becoming one of us. That is good news of great joy for all of us. For you.
God joins you in the middle of your mess in order to save you. No one is so lost or so broken, YOU are not so far gone or so messed up that you are beyond God’s reach. Our God specializes in the mess. And I don’t care how messy your mess is, it doesn’t phase our God one bit. I don’t care how small or insignificant or unworthy you feel, you are exactly the one God came for.
God chose to be born in a manger and to come from Nazareth. Can anything good come from Nazareth? Exactly! That’s the whole point!
This is how our God works. God brings his salvation to the ends of the earth not through the Egyptians or Romans, not through the Assyrians or Babylonians, but through Israel. He tells us he chose Israel because they are small and weak. God destroys Goliath, not with a bigger giant, but with a smaller shepherd boy the giant was laughing at. That’s the way God works. How does God speak to Elijah? Not through the earthquake or the wind or the fire, but through a small, still voice. A whisper. God works through Isaac, not Ishmael. He works through Jacob, not Esau. God works through Joseph and David, not their older brothers. God chooses old broken down Sarah, not young vibrant Hagar. He chooses unattractive Leah, not beautiful Rachel. He chooses Rebekah, who can’t have children. He chooses Hannah, who can’t have children. He chooses Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, who can’t have children.
Why?
Over and over again our God says, “I will choose Nazareth over Jerusalem. I will choose the girl nobody wants. I will choose the boy everyone’s forgotten.”
Why? Because God just likes the underdog?
No. Because God is telling us something about salvation itself. Every other religion and moral philosophy in history tells you to summon up your strength and willpower and try real hard to live like you’re supposed to. That appeals to the strong. That appeals to gifted and talented people, people who are privileged, people who are able to pull it all together. Jesus is the only one who says, “I have come for the weak. I have come for those who admit they’re weak. I will save them not by what they do, but by what I do.”
Can anything good come from __________? Fill in the blank with your own mess, your own situation, your own failure. Go ahead. What is your shortcoming, your burden, your sin, your circumstance? Can anything good come from there?
If you repent and come to God through Jesus, not only will God accept you and work in you and through you, but he absolutely delights to work in and through people just like you. He’s been doing it through all of world history.
I’m telling you, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been gone or how far away you are. It doesn’t matter how dark it is or how bad. Christ Jesus is all in. He’s all in with you and he’s all in for you. He knows all about you and your past failures and your present situation. He knows. And he’s still all in.
That’s the best news you’ve ever heard.
Peace,
Allan
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