God sent Christ into the world as our Savior. That’s what Christmas is all about. In turn, Christ sends us into the world. But do we really understand how, where, and why we are sent? This five-week, churchwide Advent study challenges us through story, art, and Bible study to discover what it means to be Christ’s hands, feet, head, and heart.
One of the unique things Christians believe is that God became one of us. And every December we celebrate this event. For thirty years he lived undercover as a carpenter, surfaced as a miracle worker and rabbi for three years, and allowed himself to die in the most degrading way imaginable. He came as one of us but was treated as less than one of us. So the question we have to ask is “why in the world would God do that?”
Every December, we sing the song “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus,” which reminds us that ‘he came to set his people free.’ And maybe you have sung that song for decades but you never stopped to ask the question “What does he set us free from?” So, what does he set us free from?
One of the unique things Christians believe is that God became one of us. And every December we celebrate this event. But what are the implications for us that God became one of us?
Through the lens of the prophecy of Ezekiel, we know that no circumstance is so dry, so despairing and so hopeless, that God cannot bring new life. As Christians, we live in the reality of Jesus’s resurrection from the dead and his promise of new life, and Christmas provides an opportunity for us to reflect on how that promise first came to us in the form of a tiny baby.
To understand Christmas, you have to understand waiting. And as we all know, waiting is not easy and it comes with strong expectations. We have so much hope and so much desire for what we want Christmas to be and then sometimes Christmas doesn’t live up to our expectations and we experience disappointment. And disappointment is a common emotion that we share with the people who were waiting with hope and anticipation at that first Christmas. On that first Christmas, no one was expecting a baby in a manger. That was not on their Christmas list. But one of the powerful lessons from the Christmas story is that sometimes what we want is not always what we need. Join us Christmas Eve to explore why the baby in the manger is just what we need.