Every year, I try to track down yet another book about Christmas to read during Advent, a book that points to the significance of Christ's coming. Last week, I read Timothy Keller's book Hidden Christmas, published in 2006, a short but poignant reminder that Christmas is not an event or a national holiday, but about our own desperate need and His life for our own.
Christmas is all about God setting things right again in unexpected ways and through the most unlikely people. Keller emphasizes:
"Over and over and over again God says, “I will choose Nazareth, not Jerusalem. I will choose the girl nobody wants. I will choose the boy everybody has forgotten.” Why? Is it just that God likes underdogs? No. He is telling us something about salvation itself. Every other religion and moral philosophy tells you to summon up all of your strength and live as you ought. Therefore, they appeal to the strong, to the people who can pull it together, the people who can “summon up the blood.” Only Jesus says, “I have come for the weak. I have come for those who admit they are weak. I will save them not by what they do but through what I do.”
…Here’s the comfort: I don’t care who you are; I don’t care what you have done; I don’t care if you’ve been on the paid staff of Hell. I don’t care what your background is; I don’t care what deep, dark secrets are in your past. I don’t care how badly you have messed up. If you repent and come to God through Jesus, not only will God accept you and work in your life, but He delights to work through people like you. He’s been doing it through all of world history."
And He still does.
God did not leave us in our desperation. As Keller says, "He came to fetch us."
He is here, the angel chorus sang.
He is here, our lives should reveal.
And the angel said to them,
"Fear not,
for behold,
I bring you good news of great joy
that will be for all the people.
For unto you is born this day
in the city of David
a Savior,
who is Christ the Lord."
Luke 2. 10-11
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