Infused

When one thinks of Christmas what comes to mind? Cheerful music, trees, a jolly man who sits on a red velvety chair? 

What about suffering? What about pain? What about brokenness? What about the air of death that seems infused into every breath?

Ancient History seems to be just that. Ancient, old, and dead. As stories are revealed to us, they are just words-never a person, never a story, never alive.  I challenge you to change your point of view. This morning at DCC there was a challenge. 

Pastor Mike opened up with Matthew 1.1-21. Go on, open up your bible, see where he took us today. 

If you are wondering, yes-he did read every name you see there.  Names mean nothing to us these days. Genealogies have lost their power, blood lines are something of the past, but not to the Israelites. Each of those names has a narrative that is woven through out the Bible, and those reading the book of Matthew around the time it was written would have a beautiful understanding of Jesus' lineage. They would understand that the ancestors of Jesus had lives that were continually botched. Lives full of suffering. Lives full of being oppressed and of oppressing. They would have been living in the fruits of the sins of a nation and the darkness that ensues from it. Through out their narrative the Israelis cried out to God, asking for deliverance, for protection, for safety from the events transpiring around them though they were often down the path of destruction because of their own volition.  They shouted out their resignation, their contrition, their brokenness.  Sin and darkness has an overpowering aroma that seems to taint the living, to overpower the living.  

They lived amidst death, yet the prophets spoke of a coming King who would deliver the people from death. Imagine being in a desert without water, but being promised that a well is around the next sand dune. There would be a flame of longing ignited within the chest of those who are thirsty. They would pant and groan for the water to come with every fiber of their being.

The suffering that the world endures is one that pushes people to extremes. They long for that well of fresh water around the corner. Those who Matthew was writing to saw the words behind the words. They knew suffering and they saw the words that pointed to the truth that the King had come. That is what Christmas means to this world. It means that a new creation has been brought forth and given life in the form of an infant who would one day bring death into the grave with resounding finality. With His first cry, darkness shuddered because it felt the air in this world change. The fight had begun. We live in an already but not yet place in time-one where we are already brought out of the grave, but not yet in its completeness. We still see death. We still breath in death, but we also can breath in life and speak life and move in life. 

This Christmas, recognize that the wheel goes round and we will be back at this place a year from now, but also recognize God's sovereignty in placing a time for the world to come back to Him. This is a time of year to dig and to breath life and to recognize the breath of life God Himself has given.   

When we celebrate Christmas can we remember the oppression that we are free from?

+Daniel 9.20-24