We come to Christmas with the strong belief that the basic need is the same as it was at the first Christmas—God’s action—the inrush of God’s power from Beyond! And whether this world realizes or admits it or not—Jesus Christ remains the one hope, so our key verse says:
“… all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God.” Isaiah 52:10, NIV
We need—maybe as never before—we desperately need to “see the salvation of God.” Ours is a world filled with faint hopes and invading fears. Some are trusting in political power, like a super-powerful government to save the world as it totters toward World War III. And others talk of some sudden enlightenment and the discovery of what we do not know that would bring humanity together. And still others, religion must play a role and they call for a mild spiritual and moral healing to the ends of the earth. But we need the true Christmas spirit to echo around the globe at this season.
So that, real Christian thinkers point out: The human heart empty and untouched by God is, almost without realizing it, crying out for “the salvation of our God.” The human cry is, “I want something; I just do not know what it is!” Let “all the ends of the earth” see God among us; through the human darkness God has shined in the coming of Jesus. Look and see—the human wreckage of broken hopes and shattered dreams—the sea of life is littered with people destroyed. We need a God invasion today to “all the ends of the earth”!
Too much Christmas talk sounds humanly powerless, vague, and leaves us cold—the hope of Christmas is not a temporary spirit of positive goodwill for there are tens of thousands needing more, much more than humanly engineered goodwill on a superficial level. For Christmas to mean only that, is to proclaim ourselves blind and a fool. We are missing everything it was meant to mean. We are missing that God came down for us, to do what we cannot do for ourselves.
We cannot go through this world with our eyes wide open without realizing people are deeply baffled and have troubled spirits. Because, of course, their hearts are empty in a world that has treated them unkindly and uncaringly. Perhaps that is the reason that the next fifteen days after Christmas, the suicide rates are the highest of the year in America and Europe. The sensing of a dark emptiness, in spite of typical holiday parties and celebrations and festivities, often engulfs all and even us, for without the touch of Christ on our hearts everyone feels that helpless or hopeless, empty and lost.
The famous theologian James Denny told of hearing a person tell how at a moment of need someone came with the right spirit and the right words and touched his life with a breath from heaven at a Christmas gathering. He turned in his heart to God. As Denny listened to the story of how one life came from darkness into light, he said something like this: I’d rather have done a work like that in someone’s life than to have written the most respected book of all time on systematic theology.
And we must think like that too, and then look for the God-given moments in someone’s life, and with grace reach out to anyone in secret suffering in their dark soul; troubled and beaten down, roughly trodden over by life. Believe me, they are all around us!
There are Bible commentators who tell us that Jesus performed miracles of healing to prove His claims of being God in the flesh who came to bring “the salvation of our God.” But Dr. James S. Stewart, the famous Scottish preacher, said, “I think not. He did that for them because He could not bear to see God’s children suffering.” He did it for the great numbers of people caught in their sins with stinging regrets and full of misery. Stewart said, “Christ could not bear it. And so He died to free them.”
Often it’s just too much for many to bear, people break with wild regrets that it is too miserable to bear. During these holidays, from Thanksgiving to New Year’s celebration, some are strained to the limits of endurance. It’s a time when people, after the trivial cheer of the moment, despise themselves for their bitter defeats in life. There seems to be no secret to turn defeat into victory. The hour of thrilling celebration is soon over, turned into a cold, dark emptiness within. Someone wrote, “After it was over, the world grew gray with chilling effects of a winter in my soul. I realized I was very weary of life’s journey. It has come to a very sad end—I’m out.” These words lay near another suicide of a highly intelligent person who had once graduated at the top of the university class, but now at the dark end.
But look on the people in any gathering and try to see them, not with eyes of religious superiority but with the eyes of Christ, and you will pray for yourself and them for the comfort God alone gives the human soul. Jesus spoke of “the Comforter,” and, filled with His Spirit, you can be that for some lonely somebody during these holidays.
And it is possible to be so full of the compassionate Christ this Christmas that they see Him in us! The long forgotten hymn from the old-fashioned hymn book says:
“Jesus, Thou art all compassion, pure, unbounded love Thou art; visit us with Thy salvation; enter every trembling heart.”
What a tragedy we do not sing such words today! We must not be so unthinking during the holiday gatherings that we fail to see a need. When people see the compassionate Christ in us, they will be drawn to us. We will not have to break through a hard, stoney surface. In fact, it’s all in that word “Immanuel,” which, as you know, means “God with us.” Yes, He is with us, in Jesus who is in us. And He does live within. And never doubt it, the Immanuel who is in us and with us—means that God dwells inside, and even when our faltering human words seem to fail, God speaks nonetheless. When we break down in the sense of not having the right words, God begins to speak through our humble spirit. Believe it, Immanuel means God is with you, and so, through Christ alive within you, God speaks to the heart.
At this Christmas prepare to be a blessing to someone who often wonders, “Does anyone care about me?” Boxes with bows, trees with tinsel, tables with turkey are meaningless to some whose hearts are heavy and for whom life is meaningless. Christmas is a time of unrestrained stress to many, and a year that has very little about it that is positive is coming to an end. Allow me to tell you, it is on this level, one on one, that often God’s greatest work is done. And I am sure God wants to use you this Christmas season. Life is a battlefield for so many and there will be people gathering to come, wounded and left on that battlefield—bleeding within, defeated and forgotten! And so, with compassion think of how many have ended relationships, even marriages, or lost someone they deeply loved. Others have lost jobs and experience deep disappointments after being passed over for some advancement. For some, holiday gatherings are only a temporary escape from it all—it is artificial gaiety and manufactured happiness. For them, alcohol helps, yet, just below the surface, there is a pot that boils with rage and anger, hurt and heartbreak.
And some will come into your circle with barriers broken down, and you, with compassion and with God’s touch on your personality, can be used to meet a need in their life. And if you do, it will be like angels singing “Joy to the World” to their heart. It will be a real Christmas for them. They’ll then know and “see the salvation of our God.”
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