Judges 7:1-8:17; Luke 23:13-43; Psalm 97:1-98:9; Proverbs 14:7-8
“Your dream can mean only one thing—God has given Gideon son of Joash, the Israelite, victory over Midian and all its allies!”
“Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.’”
“Sing a new song to the Lord, for he has done wonderful deeds. His right hand has won a mighty victory; his holy arm has shown his saving power! The Lord has announced his victory and has revealed his righteousness to every nation!
“The prudent understand where they are going, but fools deceive themselves.”
Where do we go from the Manger? The world has not changed. Perhaps we have. But the roads on which we walked on the 24th are usually still the same ones we must continue traveling after our Bethlehem diversion. They have the same uncertainties, difficulties, twists and turns. Why doesn’t Christmas make life any easier?
Today, the day after Christmas, a fundamental premise deserves thought. What makes the experience of Christmas positive or negative for us personally? Most folks tend to evaluate “good” and “bad,” or better and best, etc., in terms of whether that which we evaluate makes our own personal life easier or more difficult. “Easy,” of course, is “good.” And so forth. But as we evaluate Christmas, maybe a good place to start is with this basic assumption. If Christmas stands for anything, it stands for the proposition that “easy” and “good” are never synonyms in God’s vocabulary.
This is a frequent hurdle to overcome in my relationship with God. Nothing’s easy in the Christmas story, and I should not expect otherwise. Idyllic cards and over-idealizing winter beauty only distract us from the harsh realities of the season. Mary and Joseph’s trip, night in a cold stable, actual childbirth in a cold stable, shepherds leaving their flocks, the Wise Men’s mental chess with Herod, Herod’s murder of the Hebrew babies, Joseph and family’s flight to Egypt… if we’re looking for “easy,” we’re going to be very disappointed in Christmas. There’s the rub. We have allowed this time of year to lull us into a false sense of serenity. When the going stays tough, we jump to the unwarranted conclusion we have missed Christmas.
God never promises us “easy,” at Christmas or any other time. He promises His Presence. Our obsessive quest for the comfortable accounts for much of our failure to experience the grace of Christmas. Gideon understood this: His call to attack hordes of Midianites with only 300 warriors was not well-received or easy to accept. It still amazes me he was able to convince those special 300 to attack at all. The point, though, is that God went ahead of Gideon and demoralized his enemies long before Gideon was aware of his mission. Gideon had no idea how “easy” God had made things, until he moved forward in faith. Therein lies the secret of Christmas.
The invitation of Christmas is for us to move forward into a difficult world with the power and the certainty of God’s accompaniment. Whatever call, decision or circumstance we face, as we center on Christ, we can be sure He will travel with us, feel with us and give us His strength. It’s not going to be easy, but we have only ourselves and our stubborn sin to blame. On the other hand, we need never be alone… unless we give up on ourselves and on the Gift that is Christmas. There are many reasons for Christ’s cry at the Cross: “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” Leaving Christmas on the 25th of December is just one of them.
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