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.