Sounds pretty bold and unbelievable, doesn’t it?  That Someone would offer you the chance to live forever.  Could anyone do that and why?  First of all, why?   By this time, you’ve probably seen the latest installment of the Star Wars movie, the Force Awakens.  The most emotional and shocking moment to me in that movie was when a father tried to reach out to his son because he loved him so much but the son was rebelling and rejected his father’s efforts to reconnect with him and accept him back as his son (I’ve left out the details in case you haven’t seen the movie yet).  If no body hasn’t told you yet, that’s what the Christmas story is about.

I, and many others believe, that God created everything that exists including you and me.  In fact, in the Book of Genesis, it says He created us in His image and in a close, intimate, Father/child relationship.  But since those early days, the first man and woman rebelled against God, and history shows God doing everything He can to restore that perfect relationship with him.  I don’t have time to write the whole story to you but I encourage you to read it yourself.  I would suggest reading the Bible in the New Living Translation.  For those who like the old English, the King James Version is a good one.

When men didn’t listen to God, he raised up a special group of people that became a nation based on the faith of their leader.  Yet God’s intention was through this nation He would raise up Someone who would deliver and provide all with the opportunity to be adopted back into His family.  We could be intimate with God again.  We could one day live with Him forever, even after our physical bodies die.

It’s sounds pretty improbable, doesn’t it?  Even for someone like me, who grew up with a non-church going father and a Buddhist leaning mother, it sounds pretty improbable.  Even for someone like me, who as a child learned more about this Story and accepted it but then rejected it, not sure if God even existed.  Even for someone like me who was trained as an engineer and scientist.

But I came to a point in my life when I knew that there was something that was missing, something that was making me not really feeling peace inside.  That’s when I started to seek to find and know the Truth.  An unlike Santa Clause, this Person decided to speak to my spirit when I decided I was going to pursue the Truth, even if it meant facing up to the own personal darkness of my internal life.

You see, a lot of people look at a person that’s in the news who claims to know this Person, and immediately put them in a box that’s political or religious.  They immediately judge that human person and say, “that’s not for me” without ever getting a chance to know or talk to the Person, God Himself, for themselves.  The Darkness we see in the news every day and the hurt, pain, and death it causes in people’s lives keeps us from seeing the Light.

The fact is that there is no one that is perfect.  If we admit that to God that’s the first step.  But the second step, is believing that He has a solution for our broken relationship with Him.  That solution was for God Himself to become a man yet still be God, live a perfect life on earth even though it would end up having Him suffer and die.  But He, God’s Son, died in our place.  The Bible says He was like a sacrificial lamb that was slaughtered and sacrificed for us, to pay for the penalty of our sins.

History documents the birth of God’s Son, Jesus, in the Bible.  The Christmas story is when Jesus was born to a virgin, Mary, so He didn’t carry the genetic sin nature that was passed down from men.  His Father, was God.  But the Christmas story by itself is not enough.  The story of Easter was the factual account of Jesus being put to death and then rising from the dead after three days, to prove that He had provided forgiveness of all our moral failures and shortcomings, and to prove that He could raise us up from the dead so that we could live together forever with Him.

So this Christmas, and the days after, there may be a yearning within you.   A yearning for something more.  Or should I say, Someone more.

“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” Romans 10:9.

 

Christmas songs blaring loudly in crowded shopping malls attempt to make us feel happy and jolly but deep down we all struggle with the problem of pain.  However, Christmas also does bring a hidden message that there is a solution to the problem of pain.

A relative of mine was recently remarking to me about a co-worker that had bought a brand new car.  The car looked stylish and sporty on the outside but on the inside various sensors and warning lights were going off.  The cost of the repairs were in the hundreds and sometimes in the thousands of dollars.  I know the feeling, I’ve had a used car that seemed to have the “check engine” light go off on every other ride I took it on.   I wanted to reset the light but not really deal with the cost of repairing the root cause of the warning.  During this holiday season, many of us will be attempting to “turn off” the “check engine” lights deep down in our hearts and spirits and dull the “pain” we are experiencing by getting all the gifts we can buy or receive, gorge ourselves with food and desserts, and sometimes even worse: turn to excess alcohol, prescription drugs, pornography, or illicit activities.  We want to experience the highs we are “supposed to” this “jolly” time of the year but come crashing down emotionally and sometimes even physically afterwards.  The “check your life” light was temporarily reset, but the emptiness causing it didn’t go away.

If you read real close to the original Christmas story, you see a couple in a social, relational, financial and emotional dilemma. Joseph was facing some tough questions in his relationship with his fiancé, Mary. “Did she cheat on me?”, a young, engaged man asks.  “How are we going to afford this trip to deal with our taxes?”.  He arrives at the destination and finds himself, his bride to be, and their new born Baby temporarily homeless.  “What am I doing in this dump?  I thought at this point in my life I would be able to take better care of my family, I’d have a better position, and be able to afford the finest vacations”.  He suffers from self-doubt, the pain of regret, and the discomfort of not having enough money to buy better accommodations for his family.  But somehow, there was a bigger plan for his life.  The Baby that was sleeping in a dirty, wooden box was going to literally change the world.  The pain he was experiencing had a bigger purpose as long as he didn’t give up.  He just needed to keep pushing forward.  His life had meaning when he realized it was to be lived for those closest to him, to those most vulnerable to the pain and suffering the world could inflict on him.

I wonder if my Dad, John Williams, felt the same way.  His youngest child, me, had to sleep in a cardboard box as a baby.  Feeding six kids and having a wife that barely spoke English was tough for a recently discharged soldier looking for work and finding some as a garbage collector.  But he kept pushing on, never giving up, even when the pain of “breaking his back” just to put food on the table threatened his emotional and physical health.  I don’t know how he did it.  But I remember how he would bow his head as though he was praying.  Sometimes he would say to me that sometimes he felt like a motherless child.  Coincidentally, my Dad, John, was born to his Mom, my grandmother named Mary, on December 25th.

You see, the Christmas story, is the story of the God the made us and created us, did something to deal with our suffering and had a meaningful purpose for our lives.  He showed those who would notice, that He suffers, He feels our pain and cares enough to give us something of greatest value.  The Baby, his Son, grew up suffering as we do, being rejected by the people He loved and belonged to, and then was tortured and put to death with us on His mind and heart.  He bore our pain and our failures so we could rise again…forever.  If you seek Him this Christmas in desperation and honesty, you will find Him.  Better yet, He will find you.

“For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”