Making Christmas Personal

It was Christmas Eve, my favorite night of the year, as we sat shoulder-to-shoulder on a rear pew in the quaint but packed country church. I had been a Christian for slightly less than ten years, but each day since that unforgettable moment in July 1974 when I had received Jesus as my Savior, I had prayed for my dad’s salvation. Dad was the last “holdout” in our family. Prior to 1969, none of us had known Jesus as Lord and Savior, but since that time we had all become Christians — except Dad. My stubborn German father, though raised by a praying mother, had rejected his childhood faith and now insisted he was an atheist.

That night my family was sure all that would change, for Dad had agreed to accompany us to the Christmas Eve service. We had been shocked but thrilled when he accepted our invitation, since we invited him to church quite often and he always refused. For the first time, on that night of all nights when the faithful gather together to commemorate the birth of God’s Son, my dad was with us.

As the service progressed, I found myself peeking out of the corner of my eye every few moments to make sure he was still there, sitting next to my mom, whose face literally shone with joy and excitement. But so far nothing was happening. Dad sat perfectly still, his big hands resting in his lap, his broad shoulders straight, his lined face expressionless. With the service about to end, I found myself fighting discouragement.

And then the lights went down and, as if on cue, the parishioners seated on the center-aisle end of the pews passed small unlit candles to everyone in their row. At the same time two ushers began to make their way down the center aisle, stopping at the end of each pew and lighting the candle of the first parishioner in each row. Those parishioners then turned and lit the candle of the next person in the row, and so on until everyone held a lit candle.

Clutching my own candle as I waited for the usher to reach our row, I glanced over at my parents and realized my ever-practical father must have decided the process was going much too slowly, for he suddenly fished his cigarette lighter out of his pocket and started lighting candles. Within minutes he had lit every candle at his end of the pew and was reaching over to the people in the pew in front of us to start on theirs.

Fighting humiliation, I closed my eyes and felt the sting of unexpected tears as I realized my dad was simply trying to be helpful. I heard a couple of chuckles in nearby rows, but no one said anything until the usher arrived at our pew. With the glow from his candle illuminating his face, the smiling man thanked my father for his assistance. Dad returned his smile and assured him he was glad to be of help, and the gracious usher moved on.

It was nearly fifteen years later before the last “holdout” in our family responded to the loving call of his heavenly Father. At eighty-eight years of age, less than one week before his death in October 1999, my sweet but stubborn German father received Jesus as his Savior — and then promptly went home to be with Him.

I have thought of that Christmas Eve so many times over the last couple of decades. With the exception of occasional weddings, funerals, or baptisms, Dad never came back to church with us after that night, though we asked him nearly every week. There were times we wondered how God would ever penetrate Dad’s seemingly hard heart with the gospel, but we clung to the knowledge that God is faithful and nothing is impossible with Him. And how we rejoiced when God finally broken through Dad’s resistance and we saw the tears of joy in his clouded eyes. Though a series of small strokes had left him bedridden and unable to speak, we were thrilled each time he grinned and lifted his finger to point heavenward at the mention of the name of Jesus. And we were so very grateful. But I have to admit that, despite my gratitude and joy, I also wondered why Dad had waited so long to receive such a truly awesome gift. As it turned out, because he died in October, he never got to experience the wonder of Christmas as a believer — or did he?

As I thought and prayed about that very issue, I realized how I had allowed myself to get locked into dates. I knew, of course, that Jesus may not have been born exactly on December 25, but I hadn’t really considered that Christmas could be celebrated at any time other than on that precise date. And yet, I reasoned, wasn’t Christmas the celebration of the birth of God’s Son into the world? What, then, had happened in October 1999 just days before my dad slipped out of his earthly body and was whisked into the presence of God? Hadn’t Jesus been birthed by God’s Spirit into Dad’s heart? If I believed that — and I certainly did — then that wonderful day of new birth for my dad, though it took place in October, had been his personal Christmas celebration here on earth.

I was thrilled — not just because of what had happened to my father, but because I suddenly realized that the day of our salvation — our new birth — is also the day of our own personal Christmas. After knowing and walking with Jesus for more than a quarter of a century, I had come into a new and fresh appreciation of the most beautiful of all holidays. In fact, I realized how much more meaningful Christmas would be if, when we get together as a family to celebrate the gift of Jesus, we also recount our own Christmas stories, telling of the day Jesus was birthed into our hearts. If we have guests who have never received Jesus, it would be the perfect opportunity for them to do so.

But we wouldn’t have to stop there. Why not have several Christmas celebrations throughout the year? Regardless of the date, each time one of us comes to the anniversary of our new birth, we could have a Christmas party in honor of the event. Guests could bring gifts, and the person celebrating his or her own personal Christmas could designate a charity to receive them. It would provide us with opportunities to invite unsaved friends, neighbors, and loved ones, and to present the gospel to them throughout the year.

I will always cherish the memory of my dear father “helping” the ushers at that Christmas Eve candlelight service so many years ago, and the opportunities that it generated to make Christmas personal all year long and to tell others about the greatest gift ever given — God’s own Son, born into a world of sin that He might also be born in our hearts and wash those sins away forever.

Kathi Macias is an Angel-award winning writer who has authored seventeen books, including the bestselling devotional A Moment A Day from Regal Books, and the popular Matthews and Matthews detective novels from Broadman and Holman. Kathi has written commentary for Thomas Nelson’s Spirit-Filled Life Bible (Student Edition) and was part of the devotional writing team for Zondervan’s New Women’s Devotional Bible. Her numerous articles, short stories, and poems have appeared in various periodicals. Kathi is a popular speaker at churches, women’s clubs and retreats, and writers’ conferences, and has appeared on several radio and TV programs. A mother and grandmother, Kathi lives in Homeland, CA, with her husband, Al, where she is at work on several writing and editing projects. An ordained minister, Kathi serves as spiritual adviser to the Christian Authors Network and membership chairman for the Advanced Writers and Speakers Association. www.kathimacias.com .
*Printed first in Victory in Grace Magazine, December 2005.

White Christmas

By David Jeremiah – Turning Point

Christmas Day 1941, eighteen days after the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor. People found it hard to celebrate the “peace on earth, good will toward men” that usually brought comfort and joy during the holiday season. A day of pure celebration turned into one of dark despair.

And then on Christmas night, Bing Crosby sang White Christmas for the first time. In minutes people forgot the tragedy and their minds drifted into the beautiful lyrics reminiscing about a snow white Christmas.

Whether in a muddy foxhole in Europe or a modern family room in American suburbia, nothing says “the holidays are here” like White Christmas. Those words bring Christmas images to mind. A fire flickering on the hearth…the twinkle of lights on the tree…the aroma of sugar cookies….

The “white” in “Christmas” evokes so many seasonal memories. Snow evokes so many images that speak of the true meaning of the Christmas season.

Something about a baby in a manger echoes the purity of newly fallen snow. As it thaws and melts, it soaks the earth, preparing the ground for an explosion of new life each spring. It falls thousands of feet in silence and lands without a sound, reminding us that Christmas is a time to block out the noise of the world for at least a day. The uniqueness of each snowflake—scientists tell us no two snowflakes are alike—reminds us of the uniqueness of each person whom God’s unique Son came to save.

Snow reminds me of the One whose birth we remember each year. Can anyone doubt the purity of the baby born in Bethlehem—the purity of His birth and His life? When Daniel the prophet saw the Ancient of Days, Daniel described His garment to be white as snow (Daniel 7:9).

A snow crystals’ large number of reflective surfaces give it a white appearance as it reflects pure light. It is because He is pure that Jesus Christ can make us pure. After the heart of King David had been strained by the blackness of sin, he cried out to God, “Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow” (Psalm 51:7). His prayer was answered because the God of Israel had promised His people that He would take their scarlet sins and make them white as snow (Isaiah 1:18).

Like snow, Jesus brings new life. As “the snow from heaven…so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:10, 11). By the Word which comes afresh to us at Christmas, we are saved and made whole: “For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord,” a Savior who will “save His people from their sins” (Luke 2:11; Matthew 1:21). The life-giving snow of Christmas speaks of the life-giving Savior of Christmas.

The day is coming when all the earth will keep silence before Him. Even now, “The Lord is in His holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before Him” (Habakkuk 2:20). Jesus was born into this world to be judged in our place. Rather than being silent in fear of judgment, we are moved to silence at Christmas because of God’s unspeakable Christmas gift.

God alone is God—there is no other (Deuteronomy 6:4; Job 23:13). And “there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). The uniqueness of every Christmas snowflake speaks of the uniqueness of our God and His “one and only Son” (John 3:16). Without Jesus, there would be no Christmas.

My prayer is that your days will be “merry and bright” because the radiant light of the King of kings has filled the manger of your heart, causing you to meditate on His purity, new life, silence, and uniqueness.

Whether you have snow or not, when you celebrate the One born to live, die, and come again for us, you’ll have a White Christmas.

Hate Your Enemy?

When Jesus said, “Love your enemies,” exactly how broadly did he intend that command to apply?

Don’t know if you saw it online recently, but Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the fiery, opinionated Orthodox Jewish rabbi who frequently makes the rounds on cable opinion shows, wrote an article in response to last week’s attacks in Mumbai, India. In that article, Boteach argues that people of goodwill ought to hate–passionately and actively hate–people who commit acts like those in Mumbai. Here’s how he deals with Jesus’ command to love our enemies:

As for my Christian brethren who regularly quote to me Jesus’ famous saying, “Love your enemies,” my response is that our enemies and God’s enemies are different parties altogether. Jesus meant to love those who steal your girlfriend, cut you off on the road or swindle you in a business deal. But to love those who indiscriminately murder God’s children is an abomination against all that is sacred. Is there a man who is human whose heart is not filled with moral revulsion against terrorists who target a rabbi who feeds the hungry? Would God or Jesus ask me to extend even one morsel of my limited capacity for compassion to fiends rather than saving every last particle for their victims instead?

Could God really be so unreasonable, could Jesus be so cruel, as to ask me to love baby-killers? And would such a God be moral if He did? Could I pray to a God who loves terrorists? Could I find comfort in Him knowing that He offers them comfort as well? No, such a god would be my enemy. He would abide in Hades rather than heaven. And I would be damned before I would worship him. I will accept an eternity in purgatory rather than a moment of celestial bliss shared with these beasts.

I’ve seen these paragraphs excerpted all over the internet in the last few days, even on some sites done by Christians. And most of those sites are linking to it as if the rabbi’s words here are really useful in thinking through all this, as if he’s nicely threaded the needle on who deserves to be loved and whom we can safely hate.

I think that’s wrong. And I think Rabbi Boteach is wrong, both in his prescription and in his understanding of Christian teaching–and even Old Testament teaching. It’s true that if you caricature Jesus’ command there as a happy-sappy, kumbaya love that can’t see the difference between the terrorist and the terrorized, Boteach’s approach looks reasonable and even nicely realistic in comparison. But that’s just a caricature. Actually there’s a whole lot more going on in Christian thought about all this. Here’s how I think through it:

1) First of all, I think Boteach is wrong to limit Jesus’ command just to minor personal offenses. Jesus says, “Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you. Bless those who persecute you.” Persecution isn’t just stealing your girlfriend. For the early Christians, it was killing them–and/or their families–in often brutal ways. Those are the enemies Jesus is telling them to love, not just a punk who cuts you off in traffic. Besides, isn’t Rabbi Boteach espousing here precisely the mentality that Jesus rejects? “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you . . .”

2) Loving our enemies does not mean that we should work or hope or pray against justice. On the contrary, we should work, pray, and hope for justice–even human justice. Of course, there is a day coming when God himself will exact perfect justice and put everything to rights. Thus the Bible tells us not to take revenge, but to remember that vengeance belongs to the Lord. But even before that day, Romans 13 gives the state the power of “the sword,” that is, the right and authority to execute justice–if necessary by executing those who commit the most heinous crimes. There is an important distinction to be held between justice exacted by an individual, which is vengeful and wrong, and justice exacted by the state, which is retributive and right.

That means that it is perfectly right and good for Christians to pray and hope for law enforcement officials and military personnel to find and bring to justice those who commit atrocities like those in Mumbai. Loving one’s enemies does not mean hoping that they will escape justice–either God’s or the state’s.

3) So what does it mean? Well here’s where we come to the heart of the Christian gospel. I think, at root, loving one’s enemy means genuinely hoping for that enemy’s salvation–even a terrorist’s–and (given the chance) acting in ways consistent with that hope. Now I realize that this is exactly what repulses Rabbi Boteach: Give me purgatory, he says, rather than heaven with a forgiven terrorist. But isn’t that kind of fulmination just born of a boiling self-righteousness? Doesn’t it come from a conviction that the terrorist deserves to be punished, but I don’t?

But Rabbi Boteach is an Orthodox Jew. He reads the Old Testament, so he ought to know better than that. He ought to know that it doesn’t take BIG sins to fall under God’s judgment. Uzzah was just as dead as Jezebel after God judged them. So to go on and on as Boteach does about how shocking it would be for God to forgive a terrorist–much less to charge him with being a monster for doing so–is to prove nothing but one’s own sense of self-righteousness and misunderstanding of the Old Testament. Because really, it’s shocking that God would forgive any of us! And it would even be unjust for him to do so if it weren’t for Jesus’ death on the cross in the place of the forgiven.

Not many of us will ever have the opportunity to sit face to face with a terrorist and have to decide what loving that person might look like. But we do have to decide whether we’ll take pleasure in the thought of that person being in hell–or whether we’ll pray and genuinely hope for that person’s salvation and forgiveness. Putting it all together, I think the best and most Christian response is probably this: to be glad when a terrorist is brought to justice and punished, even executed, by the state, but at the same time to pray that someone, somehow, in those final moments is telling him the Gospel of Jesus, and to hope that one day you’ll stand next to him praising Christ as two forgiven sinners who, if it weren’t for him, would both be in hell.

What you simply can’t do, though, is decide that you’re worthy of God’s grace but that other guy is not.

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Greg Gilbert is senior pastoral assistant at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. and contributing writer at 9Marks Ministries. After graduating from Yale University, Gilbert earned his Master of Divinity from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary where he served as the director of research for the president’s office.

©9Marks. Used with permission.

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