Search and Rescue

For the Son of Man has come to seek and save that which was lost”  Luke 19:10 KJV  

The end of every year is a fitting time to take stock of our lives.  We count our failures and successes, our blessings and our losses, and we look at where we have been and where we are going.

Many of us will make resolutions to change some aspect of our behavior in 2019.  We may want to lose weight, or get in better physical condition or to get promoted at work or develop better personal relationships, but for most of us when night falls on 2019, most of those resolutions will still be unfulfilled, shuffled forward to another year as we continue in a never-ending desire to become a better us.

We are working right now on the third installment of our Kinsman series.  Like the rest of the series, the third book, which will be ready for release next Christmas, follows characters who need to be rescued--either from the consequences of their own actions or the actions of others.  I smile when I read reviews of the first books saying that the books make them wish that "something like this could happen in real life."

We just finished celebrating Christmas, and we looked at nativities and sang songs of the child in the manger, but Christmas is so much more than a sweet story about a little baby who was born in a stable.  The cave in which Jesus was born is symbolic of the tomb where He was laid after his crucifixion, and the swaddling clothes in which his parents wrapped him represent the grave cloths.  He did not come to earth to be a good man or a good teacher—He was born to die for us in the greatest search and rescue operation of all time.  The God of the universe looked down and saw our lonely, lost, dysfunctional world—a world which we were powerless to change—and loved us so much that He sent His only Son to save us. Jesus is our Kinsman Redeemer who came to release our debt, and He extends to each of us the greatest invitation we will ever be offered. But for His invitation to impact us, we must recognize the immense opportunity which we have been offered; then we must be willing to accept it for ourselves and fully embrace our new life.  And we have to understand that as we accept the invitation for ourselves, we take on both the ability and the responsibility to impact and change the lives of others.

In the books, the invitations extended to the recipients warn that if the individual fails to respond no later than "precisely at midnight" the invitation will be considered to have been declined and "no further invitations will be extended."  In reality, God extends His priceless invitation to give us forgiveness, a new start and a new life repeatedly throughout our lifetimes, but, if we refuse to accept it, there is finally a day for all of us when the invitation is considered declined and no future invitations are available. 

As we start the New Year, I invite each of you to see 2019 as more than an opportunity for a new resolution.  This year can be a year for a rescue—a year for salvation and a new life.  Accept God’s invitation to you in 2019. “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

 

Alexandra and Joyce Swann's second installment in the Kinsman Series, Precisely at Midnight, was released October of 2017.  For more information, visit their website at http://www.frontier2000.net.

The God Who Saves

Once again the Christmas season is upon us.  I have spent the last few days enjoying Christmas lights in Plano,  Allen, and last night in Grapevine.  Grapevine boasts that it is "the Christmas Capital of Texas" and every inch of the historic downtown is a beautifully lit winter wonderland.   As always, I was surprised at how many people were there just to have somewhere to be.   Every parking lot was filled, so we, long with a lot of other people, parked in the parking lot of a church within walking distance of the downtown.  There were so many cars in the lot that for a minute I wondered if they were having Saturday night services, but as I looked more closely, I saw that the church was completely dark.  Though the parking lot was filled with people, they were not there for the church--like us, most of them probably had no association with that particular church at all.   We were all there for the lights and the ornaments and the food and the fun.

What I saw last night is an interesting parallel for our modern society.  In many parts of the U.S., the trappings of Christianity are still very present.  That is especially true in places like Dallas, where there is a church on every corner.  But the teachings of Christianity have largely been forgotten.  For most people raised in Christian homes, Christianity has become a faded memory more than a life-changing faith.  Nowhere do we see that more clearly than at Christmastime.  We live in a society that is surrounded by Christmas from before Thanksgiving until January 2 but that has largely forgotten the meaning behind the celebration.

The story of Christmas is not the story of a refugee family fleeing Palestine, nor is it the story of a struggling single mother.  The Christmas story is the story of how God fulfilled His promise to save a fallen world by being born as a human, living among us and dying on a cross.  Without Easter, Christmas has no meaning and without Christmas, Easter has no victory.

We live in a world of increasingly brutal violence and fear where people long for salvation.  The Psalmist tells us that salvation belongs to God (Psalm 3:8).  Salvation is proprietary--He owns it.  If we don't find it in Him, we don't find it all.

Christmas reminds us that salvation is not far away or out of reach.  Christmas reminds us that God so loved the world that He came to live as one of us.  The name Jesus, Yeshua, is the Hebrew word for salvation.  It is in this name that God has revealed Himself as the savior of the world.  If we don't experience salvation through Jesus, we don't find it all.

I invite each of you this Christmas to experience the God who saves.  He is strong enough to deliver you out of whatever circumstances you are facing.  And He is the only hope for this lost and fallen world.

Merry Christmas.

Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her holiday series, Kinsman, is available in paperback and on Kindle. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.