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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