Why Christmas

Why Christmas?
Wings of Healing, P.O. Box 900, Whittier, CA 90608 ,
888/676-3806

December 2020
Greetings my steadfast friends, and prayerfully a Merry Christmas:
What a year this has been! At last the finale is here to what has been a very bizarre time with all the chaos and uncertainty. We are indeed a divided people gripped by an undeclared “civil war,” which has already drawn blood, and still confronted by a faceless tyranny, a numbing dread that has too many paralyzed. Our “Western Civilization” is as well under intense attack, but what is truly desired is “Christianity” gone. Still many seem unaware of this, and what a vast chasm separates us from those that would remake our world. This makes any hope of unity and harmony improbable.
Christianity, our churches, are not going to disappear at the whim of others, for this is God’s doing. Yet, those arrayed against us have been trying to destroy us from the beginning. The Emperors Domitian and Julian did their worst; instead Rome became Christian. The Enlightenment and the rise of science were supposed to dispense with what they called superstition, it could not. Then the anti-religious regimes of Nazi Germany and the Communists undertook to destroy our faith, but these efforts failed too. Every thing they have tried since Calvary has had the same results, just like when they tried to kill this Jesus of Nazareth, He would come to life again. As C.S. Lewis put it, “I quite realize how frightfully unfair it seems to them…they keep on killing the thing that Jesus started: and each time, just as they are patting down the earth on its grave, they suddenly hear that it is still alive, and has even broken out in some new place. No wonder they hate us.” And hate us they do!
Yes, even as they celebrate what they see as a victory; one over traditions, love of country, and yes, those “hateful” Evangelical Christians and Catholics, still they are unhappy. The truth is they will never be satisfied, content, or happy. So let’s not let them “cancel” Christmas! You will hear such ridiculous rumblings because they don’t want us happy either.
Why Christmas? Because here rang their death knell. Here was the birth of the only begotten, the Son of God, the very incarnation of God, and a divine movement that has brought wonder, joy, and hope to untold millions. Millions that do not “worship” their false “gods.” Millions that they can’t control, and do not hang on their every word.
Why Christmas, because the efforts to completely overwhelm the true meaning of this celebration with a secular blanket has not really worked. It can’t because this was the sacred breaking in upon the world, the sacred will always trump the secular. This was God’s doing, His love once again revealed. As He created our universe out of His love, then gave us free will by the same love, so now He has provided the way, the truth, and the life that enables us to be declared “not guilt.” Now ransomed and justified, God alone could provide the means by which we escape His justice. He is love but does require justice. And we are guilty, all of us very guilty.
This is why Christmas, so that our sin could be covered, so “that our love may abound more and more with knowledge and discernment, so that (we) may approve what is excellent and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ” (Phil.1:9-10).
That is why Christmas! So forget the fear and hatred we see displayed. His love is stronger. And Christmas, this birth we celebrate was God’s answer then, and still is. The only question remaining as we face these threats, all the changes that we are witnessing, and those that will surely come; will we still recognize our world? Already, things we would not have thought possible just months ago have changed what was familiar, our neighbors, and our communities. But Christianity will not change, for those that remain faithful. And I believe our Lord has and will strengthen and prepare us for what is on the horizon.
As we believe over two thousand years ago God’s answer to fear and hatred was a babe in a manger. Jesus is still the answer. God “overshadowed” a maiden “by the Holy Spirit” so that “this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, (was) crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men…this Jesus God raised up, and of that we are witnesses…and (His) promise is to you and your children and to all that are far off every one whom the Lord our God calls to Him.” (Acts 2:23,32;39).

May this Christmas also be a special time of love for you,

Thomas R. Wyatt