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To our dear friends during the Christmas season
[12.26.2018]
We have spent several times with dear friends when I had wanted to share a verse on what it means to be a believer, but for various reasons it never seemed feasible. So I am sending this out here.
Rita and I are often in the mall, where she gets her walk, and there the music lately has been all about Christmas. Christmas, not Christ. I enjoy those songs but we all know that Christmas is not what we celebrate. Instead, it is the arrival of a promised Savior.
Even so, Christ’s coming, as important as it was, has yet to bring about the promised world that we all long for. It is only by faith that the coming of Christ is worth singing about. We are like the great heroes of the faith described in the essay to the Hebrews in the Bible. The writer says of them: “These all died in faith, not having received what was promised, but they … greeted it from afar” [Heb 11:13; 11:39-40.] They organized their lives in terms of a hoped-for world, but they died before they ever saw it.
That’s our situation. We wait for the fulfillment of the promise that God will eventually produce a just world, in which peace, authenticity, truth, and love reign. The Bible concludes with this promise: “He …will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.” [Rev 21:3b-4].
That promise was affirmed in the arrival of the baby Jesus. To the shepherds “a multitude of the heavenly host” exclaimed, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased!” [Luke 2:14] His appearance was an affirmation that what lies ahead is worth waiting for, worth orienting our lives toward, for God’s agenda will eventually reach its promised denouement. So, if we believe the promise we live by faith, greeting the promise “from afar.”
That’s what it means to believe the promise.