Why It Matters

“.. Long lay the world in sin and error pining Til He appeared and the soul felt its worth. A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices for yonder breaks, a new and glorious morn. Fall on your knees, oh hear the angel voices. O night divine. O night when Christ was born. O night. O holy night. O night divine” – O Holy Night

For so many years have I heard this statement echoed… ‘we all much think about what this time of year means..’. If I’m honest, I never really understood what I was suppose to feel in thinking about Christmas.. or really.. grasping what Christmas was suppose to mean for me AND the world..?

Here I sit in a coffee shop writing this entry and next to me sit two people expressing what Christmas all is about. “I hate shopping. I hate malls. I know the objective is shopping for your loved one but so many people get caught up in it, making you angry and other people get angry while shopping. This year I am going to do online shopping. And what I’m going to do for my friends I really want to show them I care about them: go online the day after Christmas to buy a gift of something they really want at like 50% off”. The girl next to this guy nods her head in agreement that this is a good idea. As the conversation digresses, he admits that the idea of buying stuff as to show people how much their worth seems wrong. And the girl nods her head in agreement.

I think a lot of people are confused about what Christmas about..

I can’t say that I *understand* anything new.. rather my heart has been radically transformed by God’s grace and mercy over my life.. Christmas is not longer a *meaning* rather a marker.. and I am not no longer a state of confusion as to the meaning of why this time is celebrated.

Where did this turn from being a search for meaning as to what Christmas is and why we celebrate this time? I can't say there was a moment of enlightenment rather years of God moving mountains in my heart ... that I finally *get it*. The impact came..

Allow me to share..

Earlier this week, The Art House Dallas hosted an intimate evening of music performed by Sara Groves and her band. She is a favorite of mine and I was excited to see her perform live. A several dozen people came together in a cozy space at Munger Place Church; the atmosphere created felt as if we were gathered in someone’s living room. There we sat listening as Sara shared her music and her heart.. the stories behind her songs and how she's wrestled through asking God, after a trip to Rwanda, how someone such as herself - a songwriter and musician - can contribute anything to the cause of Justice and have any impact.

It was then that Sara shared the story of the Cellist of Sarajevo, Vedran Smailovic. During the war in Bosnia.. Vedran Smailovic was a cellist living in Sarajevo in the early 1990's. The people lived in constant fear for their lives as civilians were very much targeted during the fighting. One day, Vedran happened to look out his window to witness a bomb exploding on a church where people had been waiting in line for food. On that day, 22 people were killed. Enraged and upset.. he wanted to do something but wasn't sure what. He thought of this all night. And on the dawn of the following morning he decided what he must do: he would play his music for each person who died that day rather than hide in fear of another attack. Everyday for 22 days beginning at 4pm (which is when the explosion happened) he would walk outside dressed formally and played music for one person a day who had died. All around him bullets flew by him and mortar shells were being dropped. One article states: For 22 days, one each for the people killed, Smailovic played in the same spot. He played to ruined homes, smoldering fires, scared people hiding in basements. He played for human dignity that is the first casualty in war. Ultimately, he played for life, for peace, and for the hope that exists even in the darkest hour. It was this story that inspired Sara to write the song Why It Matters.

Why It Matters.. Sara Groves


Hope in the darkest hour..

As Sara sang, I felt so much move through me. It has been an intense past few weeks. Two weeks ago I found myself with a few other women in the parking lot of an abortion clinic intervening and fighting for life not from a place of condemnation, judgment or hatred rather out of love, hope and faith as we’d all once stood in this girls same shoes having already made a decision. There stood a young frightened upset girl.. trembling.. sobbing.. thinking this was her only option. And standing off to the side was a downcast shame-filled fearful silent young man.. the boyfriend. Though that day felt like a small victory as she did not walk into that clinic.. dozen of other girls and women were lined outside the door making that choice thinking there was no other way or rather, this way was the best option.

Sadly several days later, this young girl feeling completely hopeless and abandoned by the boyfriend after he made it clear that he didn't want to keep the child; along with her parents pressuring her to abort the baby... she walked into that clinic and ended the life of her baby.

And so this past Saturday, I sat with this young girl as she cried in anguish of the choice she had made.. asking why.. feeling so deceived.. wishing she could turn back the clock.. recounting the searing physical pain of her body unnaturally aborting her baby.. the feelings of being left alone on the floor of her bathroom.

Praise God this isn’t how the story ends for this young girl.

In that dark moment.. she was not alone. God was with her.

Tears streamed down my face as Sara lifted her voice in song. In that moment, my heart was overwhelmed by the massive and mighty implications of Immanuel.. God With Us.. The Incarnate God.. and how His deep love for us is more than we can comprehend. God sent His only son.. who would die a brutal death.. a man who knew no sin became sin for us so that we who are dead in our transgressions and the ONLY thing we deserve is the wrath of God.. that we would become the righteousness of God.. that we may have life.. and have life abundantly for His glory for all eternity. So that in the moment this young girl found herself in tears of anguish.. that in her darkest hour... she has hope. God is making all things new... there will be made beauty from all this brokenness. This is only the beginning for this young woman. I know this as it's been my own story all these years.

All week I’ve thought about this darkness and what Christmas means. Into this darkness, into a world of orphans and refugees, of God-belittling rebellious people, cancer and illness, of pain that is unimaginable, into injustices and poverty- into this world Jesus Christ came. The light of the world flooded the darkness and changed it forever. The prophet Isaiah says, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined. . .For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” The light came into the darkness.

What is this *darkness* as it seems so vague and non descriptive.

Look around. We all know that something horribly wrong has taken place and is taking place in our world.. we know it on a personal level and we know it on a global level as we watch the news from the containment of our living rooms.. hoping that will never be us. We all desire to experience the *good things* in life... we want and fight for a right and a freedom to pursue *happiness*; if we know such exists.. there too exists things that are dark, evil- genocide, poverty, AIDS, slavery.. it goes on an on. Unfortunately we can not escape suffering, pain and anguish. If there is anything my pastor has shown me as he's endured and persevered through terminal cancer is that we would suffer well.. and cling to a hope that is greater than anything this world can give us.



Rob Bell expresses this in his book Drops Like Stars, “I keep discovering that it’s in the blemish that the Spirit enters. The cross, it turns out, is about the mysterious work of God in which begins not with big plans and carefully laid out timetables.

But in pain and anguish and death.

It’s there, in the agony of those moments, that we get the first glimpses of just what it looks like for God to take all of our trauma and hurt and disappointment, all those fragments lying there on the ground, and turn them into something else, something new, something we never would have been able to create on our own. It’s in that place that we’re reminded that true life comes when we’re willing to admit that we’ve reached the end of ourselves, we’ve given up, we’ve let go, we’re willing to die to all of our desires to figure it out and be in control. We lose our life, only to find it.”

So that not if we sin {chose our way and not His way.. making something other than God ultimate} .. rather when we sin... He receives us as we turn from our way and allow our spirit to say yes to Him. We have an eternal hope.. we cling to His promises.. that there is redemption and He will restore the long devastated ruins that are our hearts.

The evidence of His graces and mercies are all around us.. rather it’s not a question of where is God.. it’s one of how harden and numb our hearts have become to being compelled by the love of Christ that we would be His movement.. as we are His workmanship created to do good works created to do in advance that we would walk in them {Ephesians 2}.

Shane Claiborne wrote in a letter to non-believers: “the entire story of Jesus is about a God who did not just want to stay "out there" but who moves into the neighborhood, a neighborhood where folks said, "Nothing good could come." It is this Jesus who was accused of being a glutton and drunkard and rabble-rouser for hanging out with all of society's rejects, and who died on the imperial cross of Rome reserved for bandits and failed messiahs. This is why the triumph over the cross was a triumph over everything ugly we do to ourselves and to others. It is the final promise that love wins.

It is this Jesus who was born in a stank manger in the middle of a genocide. That is the God that we are just as likely to find in the streets as in the sanctuary, who can redeem revolutionaries and tax collectors, the oppressed and the oppressors... a God who is saving some of us from the ghettos of poverty, and some of us from the ghettos of wealth.”

In his book Knowing God, JI Packer states this: ““The really staggering Christian claim is that Jesus of Nazareth was God made man — that the second person of the Godhead became the ’second man,’ determining human destiny, the second representative head of the race, and that He took humanity without loss of deity, so that Jesus of Nazareth was as truly and fully divine as He was human. . .It is here, in the thing that happened at the first Christmas, that the profoundest and most unfathomable depths of the Christian revelation lie. ‘The Word was made flesh;’ God became man; the divine Son became a Jew; the Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby. . .The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the incarnation.”

We are in need of a Savior... and He came for us. The Word became Flesh.

The author of Hebrews is saying, “Remember Jesus Christ lest you grow weary or fainthearted.” As all of us continue to move into the unknown that is before us where we don’t know what’s going to happen in our own circumstances and situations, we need to marvel at Jesus Christ and remember who He is, what He’s done so we don’t grow weary, that we don’t shrink back in our faith and so we don’t walk as people with no hope.

It’s not just that He came.. it’s why He came. Beau Hughes, one of the campus pastors at my church expressed this regarding the ‘why’ question:

And He came also to point us to a future hope. Because His coming points us to the end of the story. The advent reminds us that Jesus came to save us from our sins, but also there is coming a day that Jesus has promised that He will come again and make all things new. As He saved us from our sins, Jesus has promised that He will come and save us and the world from its groaning (see Romans 8). As one pastor said this week in his prayers and thoughts toward our church family and our pastor, the first advent of Jesus brought relief from our sins and the second advent will bring relief from our sufferings. One day there won’t be any more pain. In Revelation, John wrote it this way, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 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." And he who was seated on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all things new.". . .They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.” The advent of Jesus Christ sets our minds toward the end of the story. And as believers in Jesus Christ, we know the story, and that should affect the way we live in the story today. When darkness comes to our church family, when darkness comes to your life, we don’t walk as people without hope. We have hope because we know the end of the story, and it changes the way we fight the darkness.

And as Christians, that’s the faith we walk in. Jesus Christ’s coming floods us with hope and arms us with faith to such a degree that now we don’t only have to deal with the darkness, but the darkness has to deal with us. We can assault the darkness with faith. We can assault the problem with orphans with mercy. We can assault cancer with prayer. And even when it seemingly ends as bad as it could possibly end the apostle Paul said, “Because of the resurrection, because I know the end of the story, death doesn’t have any sting anymore. I’m not afraid of death. It doesn’t have any sting. I know how it ends.” And that’s how we’re to live. There is coming a day where it’s going to end this way, and because we know that, we live this way now. And we live in this tension and this time that the theologians call “between the already and the not yet.” Jesus Christ has already come and inaugurated His kingdom but He has not yet made all things new. And this is where we live. We live in this tension where it seems darkness still is all around even though the victory has been won.

And so as we live in this time, what do we do? We run the race with endurance, looking to Jesus Christ, considering Him the Author and Perfecter of our faith, who Himself, for the joy set before Him, endured the cross. We are to be and live like that. And Jesus is not just our example in that, although He is that to the infinite degree. But He’s also the One who empowers us to be like Him. He arms us with that faith. So as we stare darkness down, just like these men and women in Scripture have, might I exhort you with the writer of Hebrews to not shrink back in your faith. I’m not saying you act like Superman, I’m not saying you act like nothing is wrong and I’m not saying you don’t act like things are painful. But don’t shrink back in your faith. And lest we grow weary or fainthearted, we look to Jesus, we consider Him, we marvel at Him, especially during this advent season. A great light has stepped into this world and He has changed everything forever and ever for those of us who believe.

I’m grateful that the day of Christmas isn’t about commercialism or a hallmark holiday. I’m grateful that the best gift I have received wasn't bought 50% off online the day after Christmas. God’s gift to me was freely given- but it cost of Him.. Jesus Christ paid a price the sacrifice once and for all. He’s atonement for my sins and yours.. So that I may have life.. that I would have hope in the darkness.

Christmas: Christ is born... God with us. On that morning.. the world has been given hope in the darkness. This is Good News of great joy.. for all people. Wherever you are... may your heart absorb the impact of His deep love for you.. and that we need to remind each other as Sara Groves did the other night.. of the Beauty (the Gospel) .. and why it matters..

Merry Christmas and Much Love

Kyle