Living with Hope between the Christmases

“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce

Ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled,

Upright and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory

Of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

Titus 1:11-13

When you have kids and grandkids, you really look forward to Christmas.  You just know how excited the kids are going to be.  In fact you look forward to their 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th Christmases even more than you look forward to their first Christmas.   Their first Christmas is fun but they are too young to really understand what is happening.  After that first Christmas their excitement grows with each new celebration.  They know what’s coming and they can’t wait.  As a parent and now as a grandparent, I love watching and being a part of their excitement.

That’s a great metaphor for our lives as believers.  As disciples of Jesus Christ, we live our lives “between the Christmases.”   Each year, in our worship, we make the journey to Bethlehem, to Galilee, to Jerusalem, to the cross and the empty tomb.  We know about the first Christmas, about the night Jesus was born and all that His first coming means for us.  We know that Jesus was born to die for our sins.  He was born to rise again and conquer death.  We rejoice in the truth Paul writes to Titus that at that first Christmas “the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people…”  Because of that first Christmas we look forward to another Christmas coming.  He is coming back.  On that day Jesus will take us to be with Him forever.  He will give us new bodies to be like His glorious body.  He will give us a life where there will be no more death, no more sin, no more “mourning, nor crying , nor pain…”  Because of our Lord’s first appearing, we live our lives looking forward to the second Christmas,.  In the words of  Paul, we live “waiting for our blessed hope,  the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”   We live between the Christmases. 

That truth gives us hope as we live our lives in the here and now.  That truth enables us to live with hope in the face of all of life’s choices – our past choices, our present choices and the choices that life seems to make for us.   

We have all made choices we regret… choices to do wrongs that can’t be undone… to say words that can’t be unsaid.   I remember a man who came to me because he had cheated on his wife.  He was convinced he had destroyed his relationship with his wife, his kids and His God.  What would any of them want with him again?  I knew a man who after many years of freedom, for some unknown reason started taking cocaine again.  That choice almost cost him his life and his wife.  Or what about the woman who made the choice to lie to her husband rather than tell the truth.  That lie led to another lie.  Pretty soon she was caught in a web of lies.  We have all made such bad choices.  We all make them every day… choices we can’t undo.  But God can.  God has.  That’s the hope of the two Christmases.  Jesus came as a tiny baby to pay the price for all our bad choices.  He comes again in glory to undo the mess we have made… to make all things new!  There is our hope – that with God there is forgiveness no matter what we have done or said. 

What’s more living between the Christmases gives us reason to make good choices.  Isn’t that what Paul wrote to Titus?  For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory Of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”  When we choose sin, we are choosing to live as if there is no hope… as if there is nothing beyond this life to live for.  Therefore we might as well do as we please because it doesn’t matter anyway.  Well there is hope. There is life beyond this life to live for.  Our choices do matter. Jesus won that life for us by His first appearing.  He comes again to give us that life in all its fullness.  There was a ministry at Lamb of God called Celebrate Recovery.  This ministry helps people who have made bad choices to learn that they don’t have to keep on making those bad choices.  How?  By sharing with people the hope that they have in Jesus.  One day this group did a cardboard testimony in Church.  They each came out and showed the congregation two sides of a piece of cardboard.  On one side they confessed to whatever the sin was they struggled with – anger, alcoholism, infidelity, and so on. On the other they told how Christ had conquered those choices in their lives.   That Sunday a young man sitting in Church wanted what they had.  So he started coming to celebrate Recovery.  Because of the hope we have in Christ – he now makes a choice every day to say no to pornography. 

Yes living between the Christmases gives us hope as we face our past and present choices.  What about those things that happen in our lives over which we have no choice?  No one chooses to have MS or cancer, or a stroke.  You don’t choose to have a birth defect or to have special needs.  My sister didn’t choose to have tubercular meningitis.  Living between the Christmases gives us hope even in the face of such challenges.  I think of Marcia Williams from one of my former congregations.  When I knew her she was almost completely paralyzed.  She could only move her head and one arm.  Yet every time I came to see her, she lifted me up.  Often she would be on the phone encouraging others who were hurting.  She lived every day with hope in spite of the challenge she faced.  Why?  Because she lived between the Christmases.  She knew that Jesus came that first Christmas to be her savior.  She knew He is coming again to give her a new body free from illness and pain, free to move. 

That is where we live too – between the Christmases.  Every day we live thankful for what Jesus did for us by His life, death and resurrection… facing each day in the certain hope that any trouble in this life is only temporary.  After all we are looking forward to a second Christmas, “waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory o-f our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”