Everything Changed
Posted by Martha & Greg Singleton , Monday, December 15, 2008 5:40 AM
Change. We’ve heard that word a lot lately. President-elect Barack Obama won the recent election with a promise that he would be an agent of change in the White House. His opponent, John McCain, proudly sported the label of “maverick”, seeking to project an image of a candidate who would have a different approach to things.
As powerful as our heads of government are, the real change that they can affect is miniscule compared to what happened in Bethlehem over two thousand years ago. So many pre-conceived ideas and comfortable methodologies were forever altered when Jesus was born in that manger.
Even the most faithful were shaken when He was born. Their long-anticipated Messiah arrived in the most humble of circumstances. Quietly, without fanfare, a King was born. That was a stunning change from what had been expected. He lived His life in a carpenter’s shop, not a palace. He didn’t introduce His ministry with a blaring, extravagant campaign. Even His death produced a drastic change of peoples’ perspectives. The cross, once a morbid representation of death, was indelibly altered to become a symbol of His love.
Jesus’ words provoked even more radical changes in the traditional way of thinking. Love your enemies? How was that even possible? He said the last will be first and the first will be last. He proclaimed a kingdom where the meek would inherit the earth, the persecuted would be rewarded, and the merciful would be the ones who obtained mercy.
But the greatest change of all that Jesus introduced was what He brought you and me. Because He was born, because of what He had to offer us, our lives, destined for destruction and death, were suddenly overflowing with hope and promise. Beyond His miraculous birth and His stirring words was His love. Emmanuel – “God with us” – sought us in order to change us. His changes are not surface or superficial. He came to bring us a revolutionary way of living, today and eternally.
