The Hope of Christmas

Thanks to the cheesy songs we sing and movies we watch this time of year, we rightly think of Christmas as a time of hope and joy, but, if we're honest, we often don't feel as jolly as we pretend this time of year. We put on our best happy faces for our social media posts and pictures, our Christmas cards, and the small talk we make at work and church, but down deep we feel a tension- we are told to be jolly but there are just so many reasons why we don't feel that way. The solution is not just to force cheap sentimentality into the season but to embrace the true message of Christmas.

The secular view of Christmas encourages us to close our eyes to the broken world around us and to naively pretend for a few moments that everything is ok. It's like the 1914 Christmas truce during World War I. For a few hours the German and British soldiers were able to enjoy a world of peace filled with carols, gifts, and even soccer, but eventually they had to get back to the real world that was at war and filled with trenches, machine guns, and mustard gas. Don't get me wrong, there is value to these moments of escape, but at some point we have to face the fact that we live in a Genesis 3 fallen world. The biblical message of Christmas, unlike the commercialized secular message, beckons us to make an honest appraisal of the broken world we live in. The biblical story of Christmas is not as nice and neat as a cheesy Christmas movie. The real story is a messy war time rescue op in which God placed Himself on a path of sacrifice, suffering, and death in order to save us from this mess of our own making.   

One of my favorite Christmas carols is Joy to the World. Part of the reason I like it is because it was not originally intended to be about Christmas at all. Joy to the World was written by Isaac Watts in 1719 not about Jesus' first coming, but about His second. My favorite line in the song is one that is often left off of most modern secular versions. It says, "no more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground; He comes to make His blessings flow, far as the curse is found." Watts recognized that we still live in a Genesis 3 world ravaged by the horrible effects of sin, but he looked forward to a day when Christ would return and fix all that is broken in this world.  

It's unfortunate that Christmas is the number one time people feel compelled to put on a fake happy face because it’s the reality of all that is wrong in this world that made the first Christmas necessary to begin with. Christmas is not a time to ignore suffering, but a time to celebrate that God knows our suffering firsthand and that He has enacted a plan to fix it. Armed with the biblical story of Christmas, we can be utterly realistic about our world and still be filled with hope and joy.

​The biblical message of Christmas doesn't mean we have to ignore the problems in this world, but that we can stare them square in the face and still rejoice because Christ was born to remove the ugly stain of sin. The great hope of Christmas is that we can confront the worst this world has to offer because there is One who has already overcome it. Christ did this the first time He came, and now we wait for His return when the full benefits of His victory will be felt as "His blessings flow, far as the curse is found."