“It wasn’t supposed to be like
this.” Every human heart has felt the chill of these words, both from personal
experience and the experience of others. We don’t have to look very far in our world
to see the brokenness that gives rise to these words. The mother who holds her still-born child in
her arms, the child who hides in the closet to avoid the rage of an abusive
parent, the family caught in the grips of addiction and countless others know,
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“It wasn’t
supposed to be like this” is written across the walls of a home that has every
materialistic advantage but lacks the warmth of love. You can see it in the eyes of a man who
suffers the indignity of filling out yet one more form as he tries to find a
way to feed his family. With deafening silence it speaks in a family who is
trying to gather for the first time after the death of a loved one. “It wasn’t
supposed to be like this!”
You can
hear it in the wake of broken relationships. You can see it on the landscape of
war-ravaged countries. It howls through the air on cold dark nights and swirls
under bridges where homeless men and women huddle for shelter. The words hang like
an invisible sign over communities and businesses where basic human dignity and
justice has been stripped away by the greed, selfishness and indifference of
others. Where people are held in bondage, be it physical bondage or a prison of
thought, the words rise in one mighty but all too often silent chorus, “It
wasn’t supposed to be like this!”
God looked down on creation and saw
the heartache, misery, and agony gripping people, people whom he created, loved
and cherished. He heard their anguish and saw their inability to free
themselves from the self-destructive cycles of physical and spiritual death.
His own heart ached, and a mighty cry rose from his heart that thundered across
the canopy of creation as every fiber of his being cried out, “It wasn’t
supposed to be like this!
God was not content to leave us alone in our pain. He could not bear the
thought of our captivity to things that were not the way they were supposed to
be. And so, knowing we were incapable of
extricating ourselves from that bondage, he reached out not only to comfort us
in our sorrow, but to rescue us .
And so, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the
government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor,
Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6, NIV84)
Joseph was told this child would save people from the destructive,
disintegrating force that rips the very fabric of our world apart as it
separates and distorts our relationships with each other and with God – for
that is what sin does. Joseph was told
he, Jesus, would “save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21)
And so Jesus is born to repair the
breach. He comes to restore the broken relationship between God and people as
he offers forgiveness and mercy. The restoration of the wholeness of that
relationship does not and cannot happen without impacting our relationships
with each other toward wholeness. And that impact cannot help but lead us
toward a life in a world where things are more like they way they were supposed
to be. No wonder Jesus says, “I am making everything new!” (Revelation
21:5)
As I think of
the birth of Jesus at Christmas, I think of the brokenness of my life and of
our world. I think of God who never intended for it to be this way, and who, in
his great and overwhelming love for us all, came to save us from the
disintegration of our sin and to make all things new. In as much as I am “in
Christ,” I am part of the new thing God is doing. Christmas is not only the
birth of Jesus. It is the birth of a people and a world that God is making new.
