“Let the little children come unto Me…for such is the
Kingdom of God.”
This very year, just within the sphere of my own personal
knowledge, I’ve watched my sister and her family, as foster parents, give away
the beloved daughter of their heart, I’ve prayed as other children fight deadly
diseases, or begin the long recovery process from horrific accidents, and
prayed, with the rest of this nation, for the families of those “little
children” (the very ones that Jesus welcomed into his arms) who were shot and killed
by a madman. So much pain and anguish.
In the wake of national tragedy, personal heartaches, and
unnamed fears of this past month, this past year, how do we face another
Christmas season? How can we celebrate the Light coming into the world, the Light
that welcomed children? I hug my own
children close, wondering if I could sustain what others have been through,
wondering if I could still rely on a good, kind, loving Heavenly Father to
support me?
And yet…I wonder. Because I often forget. I forget two of
the very names that we call our God, the Trinity: God, the Father, and God, the Son.
Is it possible? Possible that the Creator, who made us and shaped us into His
very image, understands? Understands what it is to give away His own child? To
have Him, who was with the Father before the world even began, ripped from His
side? Sent to Earth? To see Him grow and mature in someone else’s arms – arms
that were so horribly ill-equipped to raise the King of kings? And then, He watched His Son tortured, an agony more acute for its very injustice, and led
away to an excruciating death. He gazed on as His Son suffered unnamed agonies,
agonies that we ourselves—even in this fallen world—can never begin to fathom. For
it wasn’t just a man experiencing these pains, but God in flesh. How much more
was His capacity to suffer? As deep as His capacity to love?
And then, God the Father did what must have been the hardest
of all: He turned His back upon
His only, beloved Son. The agony that the Son felt, more acute than any
physical agony, was mirrored in his cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken
me?” (Matt. 27:46) How much more agony did His Father suffer? Truly separated
for the first time in all of eternity? Knowing that Death approached His beloved
Son, He was still unable to look upon the vile weight of sin Jesus had taken on
his shoulders. For us. All for us.
It is so easy to forget, in the midst of our self-centered,
complicated lives. It is easy to lose our focus and our ability to imagine. We
read the stories from Scripture—how Jesus was miraculously born, how He
suffered and died for love of the world. But we (I) so rarely infuse the God
who did these things with any passion, any emotion, any suffering, any pain. And
the God who did this for us wasn’t just God the Son. God the Father gave much,
as well. He surrendered a portion of himself to a world that hated Him, that rejected Him, that sought to serve anyone, anything but the God who had
created them!
I have said since having my own girls that motherhood really
begins when a piece of your heart starts to live and breathe outside of your own body. I love them
with a passion I did not anticipate, until I heard their small, pitiful cries for the first time. I would sacrifice whatever I have and am for them.
But to willingly, knowingly sacrifice them
for the lives of others? What an unthinkable, horrific act! And, yet, God the
Father went a step further. Not only did He surrender His Son, His Heart, in
whom He “was well pleased,” He surrendered him up to save those who were not
worth saving. He saved those that were wicked, vile, evil to the very core. He
saved you. He saved me.
God, who is not just the Messiah’s Father, but now ours as well, knows what loss and
sacrifice are. He lived it as the Son. He experienced it as the Father. And now
He offers us, not just his understanding and his comfort, but an actual taste
of His Kingdom to come: “He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for
us all—how will he not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?”
(Romans 8:32)
He loves us! And I am convinced that every event of our
meager lives here on earth is to teach us to trust that love. It is so hard.
We don’t understand. We strain against Him so often. And, yet, ever the faithful
Father, He persistently shows us, in whatever our circumstance, whatever our
pain, our anxiety, our fear, that we can
and should trust Him, even (somehow) with those “pieces of our hearts” that live outside our bodies now. We are to trust Him just as the
Son did, those two millennia ago, when He became flesh to come to us.
So what is the culmination of Jesus’ sacrifice for us?
Where will this celebration of Christmas end, this “Christ’s Mass” that we observe? Herein lies our
hope, because the Father and His Son did not just save us from something. Our God, the Three-in-One, saved us for
something:
“Then I saw a new heaven and
a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and
there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming
down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her
husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of
God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God
himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their
eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old
order of things has passed away.”
He who was seated on the
throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, ‘Write this down, for these
words are trustworthy and true.’
He said
to me: ‘It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To
him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the
water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God
and he will be my son.’” (Revelation 21:1-7)
The little taste we have of the Kingdom now will be full-blown Kingdom Life then! Everything will be new. No more death or mourning or crying
or pain, but instead, the “spring of the water of life.” Can we trust God? Can we rely on Him? The very act of
celebrating Christmas most emphatically reminds us that we can. He sacrificed all. He gave reason and purpose and hope to everything we now go through.
So Merry
Christmas, friends and family, beloved and cherished of God your Father. May
you know and trust His love this coming new year. And may you feel Him welcome you into His arms, saying,
"Let the little children come unto me...for such is the Kingdom of Heaven!"
