The Christmas
season is a time of dreaming and hoping.
As the poet said of the children, “visions of sugar plums danced in
their heads.” It is not only children
who hope and dream. How many engagements
take place around Christmas time? I
officially placed the ring on my beloved’s finger on December 20 the day before
she was leaving for Christmas break and I had to stay and work. Ours wasn’t a vision of sugar plums for a day
but a life of joy together. Hopes and
dreams can be based on promises like, “I will take you and love you
forever.”
This view Christmas
is not new. It began with the hopes and
dreams of man and the promises of God relating to the Advent of His Son. In the books of Matthew and Luke we find genealogies
for Jesus. This isn’t just a list of
people to be passed over in our reading of the Bible. These were people with hopes and dreams and
promises of the Advent of our Savior.
Matthew begins the list in verse 2 with Abraham. Luke concludes the list in Luke 3 with Adam
and God.
Luke 3 shatters the
“Santa Myth”. That myth states that
Santa only rewards the good. Adam
doesn’t exactly fit that mold. He had
direct access to God. He had a perfect
environment. He had no needs
unfulfilled. He only had one simple rule
to obey. What could possibly go wrong in
that scenario? He sinned anyway. There goes his merry Christmas, right? Wrong!
It was in his sin that God gave the great promise of the advent of the
Savior. Instead of giving Adam and Eve
coal, He gave them hope. Instead of
saying “Better luck next year”, He gave them precious promises.
That makes Adam’s
name pretty precious on the Advent list.
If God can forgive someone for messing up as badly as Adam did, then the
Advent of His Son offers hope to all. As
Jesus said in John 3, “For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the
world, but that world through Him might be saved.” Thank God for the story of Adam for it gives
true hope to us all. Johannes Falk wrote
the wonderful Christmas hymn, “O Thou Joyful!
O Thou Wonderful!” Its first
verse reveals the hope of man and the promise of God fulfilled. “O thou joyful, O thou wonderful, grace
revealing Christmastide! Jesus came to
win us from all sin within us: glorify the holy Child.”
Visit my website at www.davidccraig.net for inspiring Christian
books.
You may also find some of my selected daily devotions at http://blog.febc.org/
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