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Now, if something or someone is going to arrive, you are expecting them, yes? The people of Israel had been told a Savior was coming. And after approximately 400 years of silence, they had lots of expectations and hopes about the ARRIVAL of a MESSIAH. Expectations fueled by multiple prophecies of his coming.
Many of the Israelites expected the fulfillment of these prophecies to be literal. They were expecting a Messiah. A king. A ruler who would squelch their oppressors. Who would bring justice, freedom, peace.
What they got was an infant, born in a cave on a hillside, raised as a carpenter’s apprentice, who was crucified at age 33 before he even had time to assemble an army or command troops in battle or make a play for power.
These were the people who argued with Samuel for God to give them a king, and then spent hundreds of years paying the consequences of wanting to be ruled. And yet they wanted a sovereign ruler, a Savior, a LEADER who was LITERALLY going to bring them out of bondage. His death was both a huge shock and a huge disappointment.
See, their expectation of a MESSIAH was accurate and appropriate. They’d been PROMISED a Savior, after all. Sometimes, it’s not our expectation in-and-of-itself that’s the problem. The problem was this: they expected the fulfillment of it to look much different, and to have a very different outcome. THIS was where they got off course. They were thinking practically. They were thinking present day. They were thinking personal impact.
But God had a bigger picture in mind when sending Christ to be Immanuel than just saving that one generation of Israelites from oppression through yet another earthly king. His plan from the very beginning had ALWAYS involved a cross and an empty tomb—it was NEVER about the BABY, it was always about the CROSS.
Christmas, you see, was not ever about THIS world. Christmas has always been about eternity. The people of Israel could only see their present oppression, and their desire for immediate relief. Most of us are no different. We are focused on our NOW.
Believe me, friends, I get this—there are things in my life I wish God would change in my NOW that remain unchanged. You’ve heard us share many of these things. And I know you have your own. I know there are things you want God to do something about in your NOW. I know how frustrating and hurtful and confusing that can feel. But Christmas, friends, isn’t about our NOW, Christmas is about our FOREVER.
This is where we must turn our focus. There are a few things we can do to help with this:
1. First, we must recognize and acknowledge the eternal element of our present day desires.
We desire the healing and restoration of relationships because that is the state we were created to live in. We long for healing and restoration in our bodies and in those of our loved ones because health was God’s original intention. We desire peace and justice and freedom and equality because that is what the Kingdom of Heaven is supposed to look like, here on this earth. We yearn for these things, not because we are ungrateful, but because that is what we were MADE FOR, and our spirit testifies to this through our ache in their absence.
The entrance of sin into the world separated us from God’s prefect design in every possible way, but our spirits still ache for what was originally intended. It is natural that we grieve death and division and decay and darkness and long for these things to be abolished in our world. God’s original plan did not include these things, and he grieves them as well. Acknowledging that our desires for these things are legitimate often gives us the ability to more easily surrender them when necessary, because we know God’s heart shares in our mourning.
2. Second, we must train our minds to share GOD’s perspective.
God is most often far more concerned about the process than the outcome when it comes to these matters. Beth Moore writes, in Praying God’s Word: Breaking Free from Spiritual Strongholds, “God is far more interested in our relationship with the Deliverer than our being delivered. God generally prioritizes one of two objectives: showing us His supremacy or teaching us his sufficiency.”
This is God’s internal perspective. We focus on outcome; he focuses on showing his sufficiency in our circumstances, thereby developing our intimacy with him in the process. This can be hard to swallow when we’re in the middle of it. We desperately want outcome. We look for the literal fulfillment of the promises we read in scripture. But, as we’ve seen over and over again, interpretation is everything.
The other perspective we must learn to embrace is God’s eternal perspective. He is always up to more in our present moment than just our present moment. The reality is that in God’s economy, it’s not always about practical, present day, and personal impact. His intentions go wider, deeper, and further than we can ever ask or imagine. Praying for a better understanding of his perspective gives us the ability to view our own situation much, much differently, and thereby accept it more readily.
3. Third, we must fight doubt and disappointment with faith and with gratitude.
We must be ever mindful where we allow our thoughts to hover. The more we indulge ourselves in worry, anger, hopelessness, self-righteousness, self-pity, or any number of other negative emotions available to us, the further we slip into darkness and despair. On the other hand, the more we look for evidences of God’s goodness and grace to us in the midst of our circumstances, and express our gratitude for them, the more they become obvious to us. We see what we look for.
But the constant practice and affirmation of faith and gratitude doesn’t just guard our hearts from negativity and depression; it also keeps our hearts in proper positioning—a place of thankfulness rather than one of entitlement. Apart from the reconciliatory grace of the cross, we are owed nothing from God. We can tend to forget that. We can tend to forget that it is the blood of Christ that puts us back in right standing with God, and that this alone should keep us on our knees in humble gratitude for all of eternity.
It’s a lot harder to be demanding when you’re kneeling at the foot of the cross.
4. Finally we must learn to draw near to Jesus and allow him to be Immanuel, God with us—thus bridging the gap between the now and the not yet.
When we’ve experienced disappointment, we sometimes tend to draw back from God and from others. We make certain parts of our hearts off-limits. Henri Nouwen addresses this beautifully:
God came to us because he wanted to join us on the road, to listen to our story, and to help us realize we aren’t walking in circles but moving towards the house of peace and joy. This is the great mystery of Christmas that continues to give us comfort and consolation: we are not alone on our journey. The God of love who gave us life sent his only Son to be with us at all times and in all places, so that we never have to feel lost in our struggles but always can trust that he walks with us.
The challenge is to let God be who he wants to be. A part of us clings to our aloneness and does not allow God to touch us where we are most in pain. Often we hide from him precisely those places in ourselves where we feel guilty, ashamed, confused, and lost. Thus we do not give him a chance to be with us where we feel most alone.
Christmas is the renewed invitation not to be afraid and to let him—whose love is greater than our own hearts and minds can comprehend—be our companion.
This intimacy God longs to develop with us—this companionship along our way—is the bridge between our NOW and eternity. It is Immanuel, God with Us in our here and now—and it is a glorious preview of what is to come. If only we will receive it, press in to it, cultivate it.
It all comes back to expectation.
As I conclude, I want to share with you one last prophecy which, as a counselor and pastor, I must admit I have a personal bias toward.
In Isaiah 61, we read:
The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.Instead of your shame
you will receive a double portion,
and instead of disgrace
you will rejoice in your inheritance.
And so you will inherit a double portion in your land,
and everlasting joy will be yours.
We, too, have expectations of this Messiah. We, too, pray that they will be literally fulfilled.
And so what do we DO, in the meantime, with all of these items on our “wish lists,” many of which are truly Godly and biblical in nature?
We have to take those desires and expectations—a reconciled marriage, being married at all, a miraculous healing, money to make ends meet this month, a child of our own, an estranged relationship reunited—and we have to take them and we have to stand in that gap between the now and the not yet, and we have to offer them up with open hands, and we have to say,
“Come, Thou long expected Jesus
Born to set Thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us,
Let us find our rest in Thee.”
And, like the disciples, we have to somehow find a way to trust, in the face of the crucifixion and death of all that we’ve believed and hoped and prayed and begged God for, that his promises and his prophecies ARE true even when we don’t see them fulfilled the way we think they should be and we don’t understand what God is doing and we ache with longing for their fulfillment in our NOW. For his kingdom to come and his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.
The birth of Christ set this into motion. The return of Christ will bring it to completion. We await the advent—the arrival—of THAT kingdom. We EXPECT that he is coming.
And with all of nature we groan in longing for the day when empty arms will be filled and loved ones will be reunited and broken bodies and broken brains and broken hearts will be restored and we will all be reconciled unto God through the blood of this mysterious and miraculous baby.
This child who was both nothing— and everything—he was expected to be.