Monday, December 5, 2016

Merry Christmas to Adam and Eve

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.” 


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