Amid the Christmas chaos, it’s easy to lose sight of the beautiful arrival of our Savior. The greatest story of love and rescue can feel distant in the middle of all the busyness of shopping, sales, and wishlists. While these can bring a fleeting sense of happiness, they cannot compare to the glorious story of God’s relentless pursuit of saving us from our sin—the story brought to reality through Jesus’s birth.
The time is now to silence your mind in the midst of the chaos and ponder the miraculous birth of our holy rescuer, Jesus Christ.
Every great story has a rescue, does it not? There is always a moment when our hearts start to beat faster and our hope begins to rise as the tide is turned and the battle is won.
This, my friend, is that part of the story.
The story of rescue is the story of Jesus. He is the long-awaited salvation the world has been groaning for since the fall of humanity. He is the one who steps into this tragedy in which we have found ourselves living. He is the one who comes into our struggle to bring out all those lost, weary, and in need of rescue. He is the light of Isaiah that breaks into our darkness.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
The opening line of John’s Gospel sends us straight back to the very beginning of time. It’s as if John is saying the time had finally arrived for things to return to the beauty—the tov—that once was. Now is the moment when God, who made the world and called it good, would step back in to return the world to good again.
And how would this creation finally be restored? How would the world be put to rights? The same way God created the world. Through his words.
Do you remember how God created the world with nothing but his words? John now introduces us to that Word. The Word who was with God. The Word who was God. The Word who was with him in the beginning and who will be with him in the end. He was and is the first Word spoken over creation, “Let there be light.”
The story of Rescue is the story of Jesus
He is the light breaking into the darkness, and there would be nothing the darkness could do to stop him! This bright and brilliant Word would stream in like the dawn on a new day. And for those dwelling in the shadowlands of death—hope had finally arrived in the person and presence of Jesus the Christ.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
The Word became flesh.
The Invisible became visible.
The God who dug his hands into the earth to create flesh and blood was now putting on that same flesh and blood. It was a messy, dirty, and lavish display of God’s perfect love upon this messy, dirty world that God was coming to redeem.
So one night in the little town of Bethlehem, hidden away in a small stable, the Word became flesh. Contrary to some popular Christmas songs, the night Jesus was born would not have been a silent night. All would not have been calm, and all would not have been bright. It would be a night filled with the stench of animals, and the cries of birth pains as Mary delivered this promised rescuer onto a dirt floor now covered in blood.
No one would have chosen to have a child there. No one, except for God.
He is the light breaking into the darkness, and there would be nothing the darkness could do to stop him!
We sanitize the nativity. We make it clean and proper and cast it in porcelain, complete with little figurines in nice colorful outfits. We do that. But not God. He knew what this world was, and he knew this shed designed for animals would serve as a perfect and fitting entrance to a world full of sin and death. The nativity must never be dressed up into something clean and prim and proper, because neither are we. The God who made us was not running from our pain or avoiding our mess. Far from it. He was being delivered straight into it.
There, tucked in the straw and swaddled in cloth was the living collision of heaven and earth. He was the Son of God and the Seed of Eve. He was the promise of Abraham and the descendant of King David. He was the one the world had been waiting for, the only one who could ever bring heaven and earth back together as one.
Looking back on this moment, the makers of the modern calendar, the keepers of time, would adjust the calendar to call this year 0. Why did they do this? Why did time restart here?
Because they saw this moment, this day, this turning point, for what it truly was:
a return to a new beginning. The day the world began again.
This beautiful retelling is from The Story Circle by Joshua Lenon.
