December 16, 2005

Dear family of WCPC:

I was in the fifth grade when I got glasses. I will never forget the experience of putting them on for the first time and seeing leaves in trees from a distance. It was a totally new visual experience. I’m certain, if you started wearing glasses as a child, you can identify with my story. I thought of this because Gene Price has had some surgery on her eyes and she doesn’t need to wear her glasses anymore. She had one eye worked on last week, the other this week. You may not have noticed, but she had popped the glass out of her glasses for her first eye. It wasn’t needed. She is seeing things now more clearly and brightly. She sees the world, like I did in the fifth grade, differently.

I share this with you because in a real sense that’s the gift of the Christ child, the gift of God to each of us. Because He has come, because love has come, we see things differently. The world, in spite of its brokenness and pain, hasn’t been abandoned and God is still at work. And just as God is at work in our world, hasn’t abandoned it, He is still at work in our lives, hasn’t abandoned us. But the work at times is hard.

I love the story of POWs in a prisoner of war camp in Germany in WW II. They had acquired the parts necessary for a small radio receiver. Each night one of the POWs would sit by the radio listening for the BBC’s news of the war and then the next day they would share the news with the other prisoners. Finally one night the POW listening heard the news that they had prayed for, hoped for and waited for. The Allied invasion had begun! After learning this he went to every facility in the prison camp where POWs were being housed. He simply said, “It has begun.” Everyone knew what he meant.

The next day everything in that particular camp looked very much like it had the day before. Sanitation was poor, the food limited, disease was still their greatest enemy, but though everything looked the same, nothing was the same. Because it had begun.  The invasion had begun. Their liberation was near and because of this hope they saw their world entirely differently.

God’s invasion beloved has begun! In the babe of Bethlehem, God has entered time and space and though the world may look the same as it did the day before Christmas 2000 years ago, it is not the same. As people of faith we see things differently because He has come. Our hope, the world’s hope, is not just that He will come again. And He will.  But that because He has come every aspect of our lives is being redeemed. 

Beloved, it has begun! There is nothing to fear! All is well! Share this good news.  People are more receptive, more open to the gospel during this season and in the coming week, than any other time in the year. Don’t waste that opportunity. Share with others how through Him you see things differently.   

God’s richest blessings of peace and joy,

David Jones