There Is A Lot to Be Angry About, but Today, Be at Peace – Opinion

Do you feel Christmas is a little more dark this year than it used to?

There’s a sense of exhaustion in the air that feels palpable. There was much more uncertainty than last year. While we are still battling over mandates and masks, we don’t seem to be teetering on the edge of oblivion the same way we were a year ago, even two. As we enter two years of vicious battles, and families shunning one another about vaccination status over the past year, I believe fatigue is starting to set in. In the past two years, so much has happened to us. We can cope with what the virus did, and have done so. Like any other sickness, no matter how manufactured, the virus will eventually end and be released from our grip. The grip on government is only getting tighter, and we are increasingly realizing that they must be removed. Worse, we’re not sure if the nation has the will any longer to do just that.

Americans don’t feel the Christmas spirit.

Today, let this column be your reminder that the Christmas Spirit isn’t something you find under the tree or watch in a commercial. Even the term “Christmas Spirit” feels like a commercial term. It’s certainly come to be a commercial term these days, and it’s one that even secular Americans use.

The Christmas Spirit is a story – a story about a perfect God, in three persons, who was Love, and so was compelled to create beings to love, and to love Him, His very essence expressed in our very existence. His lavish home and abundant work provided a nurturing environment and afforded us the opportunity to build relationships. We were not forced to love Him. Instead, He gave us the freedom to choose how to love Him. Is love possible if it isn’t freely given to you? Can love be love if it isn’t chosen?

And in this story, we play the villain – beings created by Love for love; but unable to be satisfied with such lavishness we chose instead to try to become our own gods, and rule our own creations. Love suffered the first sin, rebellion.

We all know that saying – if you love something, set if free. It will return to you if it is meant to.

So God set us free, to choose Him or to make our own way without Him, and as it turned out, there really wasn’t much freedom without the inventor of freedom. It was not obvious that we were slipping chains around each other and ourselves. Human history is lurching toward perpetual bondage since then. Humanity is a tale filled with horrors and cruelty, because our first sin has corrupted the original creation.

God’s purest nature is a mystery to us. Pure Love can’t tolerate hatred and sin. This is what we only know. We don’t know why but that’s just the way it is. Our humanity was created to be loved, and we rebelled against that. No longer could we be in God’s presence. It was a lonely, lowly place. Our sins made us mortal, but love is eternal. It was destroyed by us. We would never be holy enough to stand next to God’s glory in His eternal kingdom.

However, this is not the end of our self-destruction. This can be easily seen when we look around at our planet. The story began with a child. Born in dirt, the baby would be as poor as any man, yet he would go on to become an unexpected King. The story begins with God, who is outside time and chains himself within time to become our God, walk among us, be us. The story is about the Creator, who relentlessly pursued us in all spheres of space and time. This is the story about a man perfect who also happened to be God. He took our guilt, suffered our punishment and created a way for us to return home to the Garden with God. This is the story of grace and hope, redemption and forgiveness.

We are all part of this epic tale.

Let us today be amazed, and not mope. We should pray and not be politicized. We should love and not lecture.

We will have more chances tomorrow to find peace.

We can rest today, because unto us is born a King. All the best.