Christmas Eve Reading

  Posted on December 27, 2016  by   No comments

Could we have been any further from God? Could the expanse have been any greater? Could the clouds have been any darker; that swirling mass of fog, separating man from his maker, could it have been thicker?

No.

The breadth between God and us was so vast, so pronounced, so massive that to call it anything less than infinite would reveal an equally vast naiveite. Yes, an infinite canyon cratered between God and us. Man could not peer across the chasm to gain a view of God in His holy dwelling. We were completely, totally, absolutely and conclusively separated, cut off, and banished from His holiness.

The curse worked its way through the world affecting all of life – the trees, the beasts, the birds, and, especially, mankind – until all were sick and dark, stricken and cast down. The curse, the fall, the sin of man plagued the created until, at last, all of mankind, in Adam, was rendered totally dead – dead in trespasses and dead in sins. The heart may have had a beat, the lungs may have expanded, and the eyes may have blinked, but we were dead.

As time grew, so the darkness grew. Further and further from God was the journey we took. The path away from righteousness was the muddy path we trudged. The worldly map leading away from godliness, holiness, and the very divine presence was the chart we willingly followed.

And as we wandered, the darkness gathered up until all the hope and all the thought and all our desire for God was gone.

Could we do anything to reach God? Could we stretch a wire across the two cliffs – the cliff of life and the cliff of death – in order to gingerly, carefully, and perfectly tiptoe from one side to the other? Was there anything, anything at all we could do to reach God, to call out to God, to find God, or to implore God to restore to us life? Could we find a light bright enough to drive the darkness away and to show us the path through the valley of death to the celestial hills of everlasting life?

No. We couldn’t.

But God did.

The One who said, let there be light, sparked a flame that fell from the hosts of heaven to the lowly, broken, and cursed world. The God who is mighty and driven by love and mercy and abundant grace has done a great thing. He looked in on our hopeless state and moved. He did not wait too long. He did not let the darkness deepen too much. He did not let the gap grow too huge. No.

He came at the appointed time; the appropriate time; the right time. He came at the consolation of all things. He came at the exact moment to enact a miraculous rescue that He, in His three persons, planned in eternity past.

Yes. Indeed, the God, who said, “Let there be light in the darkness,” has made this light burst brighter than the blistering sun. He has made it shine brighter than the dawning day. He has made it shine so powerfully that no darkness can withstand its heat. All shadow and all gloom and all sorrow and all hopelessness have run from this purifying, burning, and holy light.

Yes, this light came in the silence of the night. To no one, and to nowhere suspecting, God came to do the unexpected. The glorious light of God shone brighter than the heavenly star hung above the lowly city of Bethlehem.

This light? Where was it? What was it? Who was it?

It was a baby, a King baby and yet a servant baby, a holy baby and yet a human baby. Laid in a manger and wrapped in swaddling clothes. Yes, there it was. There was the hope of all the world. The only one who could reach from the heavens above to the earth below. The ladder that man could climb. The Lamb that man could slay. The path that man could walk. The righteousness that man could not earn. The representative in whom man could place his faith. There He was on Christmas Day.

The advent of God Himself was shining; and it shines as bright tonight in our hearts so we can see and know and behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.