A Manger and a Messed Up World

I love all the "joy to the world." All the Christmas electricity in the air.

But just down from the manger is a flag at half-staff. For 26 Connecticut funerals...for all those little children gunned down so brutally just eleven days before Christmas. There are clouds over the Christmas sun this year. A nagging sadness, challenging the joy.

We live in a violent time. An angry time. A conflicted, confusing time. But it's still Christmas. The "most wonderful time of the year."

The dueling joy and sadness of Christmas 2012 is not new. It was there in Christmas 1864 when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day." In some of the darkest days of the war that sundered a nation and bathed it in blood.

Longfellow knew the Christmas angels had announced that Jesus' birth would bring "peace on earth." But the battlefield news sang another song. He wrote, "And in despair I bowed my head: 'There is no peace on earth,' I said; for hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, good-will to men.'"

With so much sadness in the news...with the Middle East a boiling cauldron...with anger and polarization paralyzing our nation and its leaders - what ever happened to that peace on earth?

I've concluded you can't understand the peace promise of Christmas without the angelic announcement that precedes it. "For to you is born this day...a Savior, who is Christ the Lord" (Luke 2:11).

The coming of Jesus isn't just history or theology - it's profoundly personal. This Savior is born "to you." And when you've asked Him to "Savior" you, He brings into your heart an inner peace that only He can give. Peace in your soul on an earth like this.
It turns out there really is no ultimate contradiction between the joy of Christmas and our brokenhearted grieving. Whether it's the horror of Newtown or our own personal sadnesses.

Because the God-invasion of this planet, birthed in a Bethlehem stable, has added a profound new dimension to this thing called "life." Jesus added the word that changes everything. "Eternal." The end of life here is not the end after all. "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him has eternal life" (John 3:16).

But it took a Savior to make life everlasting. Because human sin - our personal rebellion against God's rule over our life - has placed each of us, and all of us, under a penalty of eternal death. With no way to reach a holy God, no hope for a heaven beyond the hurt of earth.

It was with good reason that the heavens exploded with celebration the night the Son of God became a man. Only God could come here and live without sin. But only a man could take our place and die for our sin. The God-Man. That Baby in the manger. And bring us the peace that can finally calm the storm in the human soul. Peace with God.

In the words of an Army chaplain on the front lines in Afghanistan: "It's the peace that means the long war between the heart and its Maker is over. It's a peace treaty offered in Bethlehem and signed in blood, on Calvary."

A peace that floods into a human heart when the Savior of the world becomes "to you a Savior." On the day you go to that manger...when you go to that cross, and say "For me." In the Bible's words, when you stake your life and your eternity on the fact that "He loved me and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2:20).

Because this peace with God is unloseable, it anchors your soul no matter how violent the storm. An anchor that holds.

Glory to God in the highest!

Merry Christmas!