Merry Christmas

A Merry Christmas, those words are being said by friends and neighbors and even a few in the marketplace, and Jan and I have already been invited to our first neighborhood party, and it was a delight.  Christmas has been celebrated for many a year, yes often we leave out the one it is named for, and many would have us call it happy holidays and leave Christ out of the season.  But God, how I've learned to love those two words and it's not about a historical person, though some see Him as such, nor is it about the late Jesus the Christ, no, not even the pagans refer to Him as such.  But it is our Lord, the Christ, who became flesh and lived among us and took on the sins of each of us and died on a cross but the grave had no hold on Jesus and He arose and is now at the right hand of the Father.

A man whom God has blessed with the ability to put words on paper and help people like me to grasp God amazing love for each of us is Max Lucado.  Jan and I are reading a little book that tells that story in a way that is fresh and will bless your socks off.  It is titled "In The Manger" and we want to share the first chapter, for it was such a blessing to our life.

The Author of Life

“Then God said, “Let there be light”

Genesis 1:3

Seated at the great desk, the Author opens the large book.  It has no words because no words exist.  No words exist because no words are needed.  There are no ears to hear, no eyes to read them.  The Author is alone.

And so he takes the great pen and begins to write.  Like and artist gathers his colors and a woodcarver his tools, the Author assembles his words.

There are three.  Three single words.  Out of these three words, the story will suspend.  He takes his quill and spells the first T-i-m-e.  Time did not exist until he wrote it.  He himself is timeless, but his story would be encased in time.  The story would have a first rising of the sun, a first shifting of sand.  A beginning . . . an end.  A final chapter.  He knows it before he writes it.  Time.  A footspan on eternity’s trail.

Slowly, tenderly, the Author writes the second word.  A name. A-d-a-m.  As he writes, he sees him, the first Adam.  Them he sees all the others.  In a thousand ears in a thousand lands, the Author sees them.  Each Adam.  Each child.  Instantly loved.  Permanently loved.  To each, he assigns a time and appoints a place.  No accidents.  No coincidences.  Just design.

The Author made a promise to these unborn.  In my image, I will make you.  You will be like me.  You will laugh.  You will create.  You will never die.   And you will write.

They must.  For each life is a book, not to be read, but rather a story to be written.  The Author starts each life story, but each life will write his or her own ending.  What a dangerous liberty.  How much safer it would have been to finish the story for each Adam.  To scrip every option.  It would have been simpler and safer.  But it would not have been love.  Love is only love if chosen.  So the Author decides to give each child a pen.  “Write carefully,” he writes.

Lovingly, deliberately, he writes a third word, already feeling the pain.  I-m-m-a-u-e-l. 

The greatest mind in the universe imagined time.  The truest judge granted Adam a choice.  But it was love that gave Immanuel, God with us.  The Author would enter his own story.  The Word would become flesh.  He, too, would be born.  He, too, would be human.  He, too, would have feet and hands, tears and flesh.  And most importantly, he, too, would have a choice.  Immanuel would stand at the crossroads of life and death and make a choice.

The Author knows well the weight of the decision.  He pauses as he writes the page of his own plan.  He could stop.  Even the Author has a choice.  But how can Love not love?  So he chooses life, thought it means death, with hope that his children will do the same.

And so the Author of Life completes the story.  He drives the spike in the flesh and rolls the stone over the grave.  Knowing the choice he will make, knowing the choice all Adams will make, he pens, “The End,” then closes the book and proclaims the beginning.

“Let there be light!”

The Author of Life

O Lord, Author of my life, thank you for creating me in your image and starting my story.  Help me write it carefully and truly become like you.  Come, O come, Immanuel, and help me complete my story well in Jesus name, amen.

A work of Max Lucado called  “In the Manger”