“Evil visited this community today.”
- CT Gov. Malloy

I don’t watch the evening news.  Story after story of injustice, tragedy, and hurting people interrupted only by the weatherman is a depressing way to end the day.  Maybe it’s too much reality.  Life is hard.  We’ve all experienced injustice, when the fallenness of this world wounds us. We all have scars to prove it.  It doesn’t take us long to learn that the world is not a kind place. But even the most jaded among us was probably speechless at the shootings at a Connecticut elementary school Friday morning.

The mental image of Christmas gifts that will never be opened is crushingly sad.  These were 6 year olds!  Most probably didn’t tie their own shoes before they got dropped off at school.  I can’t imagine the shock and pain the parents of those kids feel right now – nor do I want to.  The news is heartbreaking enough at arms’ length.

But even at arms’ length, I have to admit: the silly happiness of most Christmas music on the radio today felt very out of place. But one song seemed to deal pretty honestly with the doubts that come with the chaos of this fallen world. Its words were written by a guy who was intimately familiar with a world that seemed to be completely out of control: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Christmas 1863 was not particularly merry for Longfellow.

The country was in the midst of the Civil War.  Longfellow – like probably many, many Americans that winter – did not feel joyful.  At all.

18 months earlier, Longfellow’s wife Frances had sealed an envelope with hot sealing wax, as she’d probably done hundreds of times before. But this time her dress caught fire.  She died of her burns the next morning.  When the blaze had ignited, he had thrown himself onto her to try and snuff out the flames, but had burned himself so badly in the process that he was unable to attend her funeral.  As his skin slowly healed, he was left alone to deal with his own grief and care for their children in the midst of a nation at war with itself.  The next spring, his oldest son, Charles, ran off to join the army.  Henry found out later when he received a letter in March.  In November, Charles was shot and severely wounded.

Longfellow’s world must have felt like it had spun off its axis.  Random chaos, tragedy, pain – these were the things that seemed to define his life in Christmas 1863.  Christmas carols with words like “merry and bright,” probably felt absurdly trivial for him, too.

This was the setting for Longfellow when he wrote one of the most well-known Christmas poems titled simply, “Christmas Bells.”  It’s since been redone as a song, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” which you may know.  In it Longfellow lays out the causes of his heartache and the intense fear of a father who is helpless to protect his child in the face of thundering enemy guns.  He admits that his experience makes him doubt that God is in control, that good hasn’t been defeated by evil.  But then – almost in answer – he hears “the Christmas Bells” ringing:

And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;

“For hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The Wrong shall fail,

The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

Longfellow realized that Christmas itself is the reason for our hope.  The tragedy of our human experience points us to the promise of the baby born in barn.  The injustice and suffering of Christ’s day was equal to ours.  The parents He was born to probably struggled to find similar answers: had God forgotten His people?  Did He see how they were suffering?

And then came the baby.  Mary sang the Magnificat.  Simeon also understood.  The baby was the very embodiment of hope.  God had come Himself to save, to deliver.  Suffering, pain, death – this Child would eventually be the end of it all.  Though He would suffer unjustly and die a tragic, painful, humiliating death on a rough wooden cross, death would not hold Him.  He would turn death against itself.

This is the Christian hope: that injustice – an inescapable part of fallen human experience – will one day end. Justice will prevail.  Pain, sickness, even death – all of it will not last.  Evil is not eternal.  In Christ we have an indestructible hope – and that is the Christmas message: God has come in flesh to begin the end of all that.  ”Peace on earth” will one day be the inescapable human experience.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
- Rev 21:3-4

Deep in every heart, this is what each of us longs for, isn’t it?

Come quickly, Lord Jesus.

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That’s a very hard place to be. If you’re there now, remember: throughout the Bible, it is in those spots where God seems to show up most decisively. In Egypt, when His people cried out for a deliverer, He came. When Goliath mocked and intimidated God’s people… He showed up. And when the Romans and a corrupt priesthood had reduced the nation to slavery once more, and His people cried out “Hosanna! Save us now!” He came.

Advent is by design a season of waiting.

But not everyone can wait…Advent can be celebrated only by those whose souls give them no peace, who know who know that they are poor and incomplete, and who sense something of the greatness that is supposed to come, before which they can only bow in humble timidity, waiting until he inclines himself towards us – the Holy One himself, God in the child in the manger. God is coming; the Lord Jesus is coming; Christmas is coming. Rejoice, O Christendom!
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Bonhoeffer knew something about waiting, spending years in a Nazi prison during WWII.

Do you need God to show up? Don’t give up hope! This is the message of Christmas: the Sovereign God who spoke the Universe into being and who holds it all together even while it seems like everything wants tear itself apart – He has come to save, to deliver. He snuck in the back door, in a barn out in the sticks. But does it matter how He got here? God has come to save those who need saving.

Do you need to be saved?

Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
- Mark 2:17

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Yahweh, you are in our midst, we are called by your name. Do not desert us! O our God, you are our hope.
- Jeremiah 14:9, 22

Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin!
- Psalm 51:1-2

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred let me sow love
where there is injury let me sow pardon
where there is doubt let me sow faith
where there is despair let me sow hope
where there is darkness let me give light
where there is sadness let me give joy.
O divine master, grant that I may not try to be comforted, but to comfort,
not try to be understood, but to understand,
not try to be loved, but to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in forgiving that we are forgiven,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

(From “The Prayer of St. Francis” in The Divine Hours: Pocket Edition)

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But time passed and the romance faded. Her husband had several “fatal flaws,” and the stress uncovered her own carefully hidden baggage. Their marriage began to crumble. The final blow came when she discovered her husband had had an affair. The divorce was spectacularly messy as both sides tried to extract the most pain from each other possible. But hurting him wasn’t enough, and she became increasingly bitter. He’d broken her heart, stolen her dreams and then left her alone. Her anger was justified, which made it all that much harder to let go of. So instead of moving on, she sank deeper into herself. Her bitterness consumed her, leaving only the ugly shell.

Forgiveness is very, very hard. As C.S. Lewis put it, “Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.”  The deeper the hurt, the harder it is to forgive, because forgiving someone who’s hurt you feels like letting them win, like the act of forgiving them and letting go of the anger will somehow allow them to get away with it. When someone tearfully says they can’t forgive someone who’s hurt them deeply – I believe them. There are many hurts that we just don’t have the resources within us to allow us to truly forgive.

Letting the hurt and bitterness go is often much harder than we think, because it becomes a part of us. But not letting go is quite literally a deal with the devil, one that will consume and enslave your soul. Christ died in our place to set us free from that debt. Now we need to forgive our debtors.

Who do you need to forgive? Who has hurt you deeply? Maybe it was this week. Maybe it was a lifetime ago. But we must forgive, as God has forgiven us. Accept the forgiveness that God is offering you in Christ, and allow Him to fill you with the divine resources that allow us to forgive – to be reconciled to the ones who have hurt us, who have sinned against us.

“…Jesus answering said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And he answered, “Say it, Teacher.”

“A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.” And he said to him, “You have judged rightly.” Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven — for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.” (Luke 7:40-47)

Pray with me today for the people in our church. Life in a fallen world is hard, and we’re all damaged by it. But we are also people who have been forgiven for so much. Pray with me that God would make us into people capable of forgiveness, who are characterized by our God-given ability to forgive.

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Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.
- Psalm 19:14

The hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeks such to worship Him.
- John 4:23

Almighty and most most merciful Father; we have erred and strayed from your ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against your holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done; and there is no health in us. O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. Spare those who are penitent, according to your promises declared to mankind in Jesus Christ our Lord. Merciful Father, grant – for His sake – that we may hereafter life a godly, righteous and sober life, to the glory of your Holy Name. Amen.

(From the 1928 Book of Common Prayer)

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Of course, it’s not like they weren’t warned. In his introduction to his new students, he hops up on his desk. “Why do I stand up here? I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly try to see our world in a different way.” And then he marches each boy up and over his desk to have a look for themselves.

This is how I see the scene when Jesus begins to teach his disciples about forgiveness. Learning to forgive as God has forgiven us is not simple. It requires an entirely different perspective.

Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.
- Matthew 18:21-22

Peter’s view was generous by the standards of the day. Rabbinic tradition limited forgiveness to three times, Peter more than doubles it. But Jesus – seeing that Peter is looking for a minimum requirement, and misses the point – moves the bar out to a completely unreasonable distance. After all, there’s no easy way to keep track of how often you’ve forgiven someone if the limit is 77 times. Can you imagine the paperwork? The spreadsheets? Especially for those of you with 1000 Facebook friends!

Forgiveness is very hard, isn’t it? I’m sure the rabbinic tradition had at its roots a desire to minimize the hurt and damage people could do to one another. “You can burn me three times, but then we’re done.” But in reality – whether the hurt is a deep wound or a minor bruise, we often have a hard time truly forgiving even just once. I may say, “it’s ok.” But in reality, that’s very far from the truth.

When someone hurts me, that hurt tends to color how I view that person. And if I don’t forgive them as God forgives me, that one hurt, that one sin they’ve committed against me becomes a global issue that defines how I view everything about them. Maybe its self-protection: if I assume you’re that you’re “that kind of person,” the kind who doesn’t mind hurting people, I can write you off and pretend that somehow makes it better. Then – like Peter – I can check the box off, claim I’ve forgiven you, fulfilling my obligation.

This – thankfully – is not how God forgives us. Instead, God sees us as He made us to be. He does not ignore the sins we commit, but He also doesn’t allow those sins to define who we are in His eyes. But He made us in His image, and He has given us infinite value in doing so. So when we ask His forgiveness, He truly forgives. It does not define us. Effectively speaking, it’s “as far as the east is from the west,” (Psalm 103:12) in His mind. And there is no limit to the number of times He will forgive us.

In order to forgive others as God has forgiven us, then, we need a completely new paradigm. We need to learn to see others as God sees them. Do you pray for the people who hurt you? And I don’t mean the “call fire down from heaven” prayers. Do you thank God for them? Do you praise Him for making that person the way He made them? That’s a very hard thing to do – especially when the wounds they leave are deep and will leave lasting scars.

But when you and I look at our own scars and remember the sins others have committed against us, when we “unbury the hatchet,” we need to stop and remember Christ’s scars. The ones you and I gave Him. He has forgiven us, and no longer holds our sins against us. He loves us more than we can fully understand, like the father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, who behaved in an undignified way to restore his son.

Think today of people who have hurt you (it may not take much effort). They’re probably friends or family, because they have the ability to hurt us most, don’t they? Pray for them. Pray that God would help you forgive them. Thank Him for putting those people in your life, and list off some reasons you’re glad they’re in your life (even if it’s like loving a porcupine!). Pray as Jesus instructed His disciples to pray: Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. Finally, ask Him to teach us to see them as He sees them, to love them as He loves them.

Imagine the impact on our world – on our kids, on our coworkers, on the people who live next door – if we had that radically different perspective on those who hurt us?  What would the world do with people who truly love and forgive others like Christ loved and forgave us?

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Now what would you do if God showed up and said, “I want to you head generally west until I say stop”?

But Abraham was unique. He believed that God would deliver on His promises, and so Abram obeyed in faith, and headed west (Heb. 11:8). God tested Abraham’s patience, though. Sarah, his wife, saw her childbearing years come and go… but no child. Had God forgotten His promises? If Abraham was to become a great nation, it had to start with at least one child. You know the story, and you know that God provided. Isaac was born – the “child of promise.” Imagine how Abraham looked on his miraculous boy as he grew. I know how I watch my girls as they grow, as they learn things – I’m completely smitten. I can’t imagine Abraham’s feelings for a boy who – biologically-speaking – should not have been there.

Just as I can’t imagine how deeply Abraham treasured his only son, I also can’t imagine his feelings when God asked him to do yet another crazy thing:

After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” (Gen 22:1-2)

Whatever form that awful command took, Abraham was certain it was from God. He got up early the next morning and set out. He didn’t hesitate. It’s a three-day hike to Moriah from where they were, though, so he had a lot of time to think about it. What did he talk about with his son? I imagine it was a quiet trip as Abraham battled his own mind and heart, trying desperately to make sense of God’s command. He apparently resolved the issue in his mind, a way through the nightmare, even if he couldn’t find a way out. The writer of Hebrews gives us a glimpse of what Abraham decided:

By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. (Heb 11:17-19)

Back in Genesis 22, we read the horrifying details:

And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together.

When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. (Gen 22:6-10)

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we move directly from submission (“thy will be done”) to provision (“give us our daily bread”). Yet we reverse the order, don’t we? We ask for provision, and – if God provides, we think – then we’ll submit to His will for us. This is not how it was for Abraham. God promised, and so Abraham packed up and moved to a foreign land, trusting that God would provide. God provided a son… and then asked Abraham to give him back. When Isaac asked, “where is the lamb,” Abraham responded in faith: “God will provide.”

And God did provide. God stopped Abraham, and provided a substitute for Isaac: a ram caught in the bushes. Abraham called that place, “The Lord Will Provide” – Yahweh Jireh in Hebrew.

Almost 2000 years later, God would again provide a sacrifice. But this time, He would not stop it, because it would be His Son that He was providing. Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, would be the God-given substitute for you and me.

When we ask for God to provide our daily bread, we are acknowledging our need for His daily provision – and we have many needs.  But in our neediness, we are also looking for the Provider – for Yahweh Jireh – to meet our ultimate need for forgiveness.

“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35)

“Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” (Psalm 34:8)

The offered Christ is distributed among us. Alleluia!
He gives his body as food and His blood He pours out for us. Alleluia!
Draw near to the Lord and be filled with His light. Alleluia!
Taste and see how sweet is the Lord. Alleluia!
- Armenian Liturgy

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- St. Patrick

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Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
- James 1:17

Have you ever thought much on the idea of prayer? We’re here meditating on the Lord’s Prayer – the model He used to teach His followers how to pray. It starts off with a heavenly focus, and we join with the angels in praising God for being God. But here we turn back to earth – to the interim time we live in: to the Kingdom of Grace. And here, I think, is where “things get real,” so to speak, where we finally acknowledge our neediness, our smallness, our weakness and inability.

Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed by your Name,
Your kingdom come, your will be done
On earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not a fan of being needy, weak, unable. I have too much pride. But if I’m honest (or at least biblical), I have to look at anything good I’ve accomplished and say to myself those infamous words: “you didn’t build that.”

No, it wasn’t the government. Government is just a system of weak, needy people like me. At its root, every good thing I have is all from God.

“Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end. Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day.”
- Deut. 8:11-18 (emphasis mine)

Whether your “wealth” is in material things or in non-material (like a healthy, happy family, for example, or a meaningful life), you didn’t earn that. While you may have made wise choices, how did you learn the difference between wise and foolish choices in the first place?

And, of course, the most foundational of all of these things: if you’ve been saved and given entry into the very throne room of God – why you and not someone else?  God does not save people because they are smarter, wiser, or harder workers. He saves those who acknowledge their need for His grace, for His forgiveness. He saves the needy, the weak.  Who does Jesus work miracles among during His 3-year ministry? Almost without exception, it’s the people who came to Him desperate, with nowhere else to turn.  We are called to live by faith in His ongoing work in us, dependent on Him as a branch is dependent on its root (John 15:1-11).

You and I need God to provide the most basic things for us today. He alone is our provider. He alone will feed us in the wilderness, will bring us to the Promised Land, where He will prosper us in whatever way He sees fit.

So today, think about what it means that “all good things” come from God. What are the good things in your life that He has provided? How did He get you where you are? Sunday, Pastor Phil asked us to get outside our comfort zones and publicly acknowledge God’s goodness and provision. That may be on the Pin Oaks Facebook page, or it may be simply in a conversation with a neighbor. Either way, don’t keep it to yourself. Life is very hard, and it often feels very lonely. There are people all around you who need to see that God really does keep His promises.

Who will you encourage today?  Who will you tell about God’s provision and goodness?

Gracious heavenly Father – You hold all things together, and all good things come from You. Help us to acknowledge our desperate need for you, and forgive us for the pride that keeps us from doing that. Teach us to see Your provision, so that we may learn to trust You more today.  Amen.

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Early in the morning I cry out to you, for in your word is my trust.
- Psalm 119:147

I put my trust in your mercy, my heart is joyful because of your saving help.
- Psalm 13:5

Yours are the heavens; the earth is also yours; you laid the foundations of the world and all that is in it.

Lord, I pray that your grace may always precede and follow me, that I may continually be given to good works; through Jesus Christ my Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and forever.

Lord God, almighty and everlasting Father, you have brought me in safety to this new day: Preserve me wth your mighty power, that I may not fall into sin, nor be overcome by adversity; and in all I do direct me to the fulfilling of your purpose; through Jesus Christ my Lord. Amen

(from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime)

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