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I was posting an image on a forum the other day and wanted to post something that communicated a bit of the "Christmas spirit". However, as I thought about it, I realized that our perception of the "Christmas spirit" (mine included) seems to be rather distorted. We think of these beautiful winter scenes or of cuddly animals in a cute little stable, but the real story of Christmas is that God entered into the pain and filth of our world, coming and identifying with all that had gone wrong as a result of man's rebellion. Jesus came through the pain of childbirth into a filthy, cold and fly infested animal stable. There was nothing romantic about it. The hotel was full and God was left on the street. His life was spent identifying with the poor and hurting in the world.
We can however sing “Joy to the World”. The joy is that he came not to simply to understand and identify with the misery of our lives, but to bring change and redemption to this world, yet not at all in the way we would expect. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, “the heart of the problem is the problem of the human heart.” Through his payment on the cross for our rebellion, he has created a door of hope in this fallen world and had begun a grass roots insurgency that is focused on the restoration of men and women from the inside out. He’s preparing a people for the eventual restoration of this world. Photos like this remind me, not of Christmas but rather of the beautiful world God intended us to enjoy and the promise of restoration both inside and out.
Here is a part of an article by CS Lewis that I read the other day: Why is God landing in this enemy-occupied world in disguise and starting a sort of secret society to undermine the devil? Why is He not landing in force, invading it? Is it that He is not strong enough? Well, Christians think He is going to land in force; we do not know when. But we can guess why He is delaying. He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely. I do not suppose you and I would have thought much of a Frenchman who waited till the Allies were marching into Germany and then announced he was on our side. God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else—something it never entered your head to conceive—comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever. We must take it or leave it.
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