FollowBy Dan Amos
This year, our family exchanged gifts and had our family meal on December 23. It’s our newest phase of life, in which Fran and I no longer set the agenda but coordinate getting together with our sons’ three families and their families. But when we did, as we’ve done for dozens of years before, we read of Christ’s birth from Luke’s account. It’s difficult not to think of Linus from A Charlie Brown Christmas, but I read from the NIV instead of King James. Even this set off an amusing discussion of translations among the now four families being created out of our one.
The following evening, we participated in the Christmas Eve service in which Brian and the team led us through the story of Christ from Old Testament prophecies to His birth, death, and resurrection. Brian repeated throughout Israel’s history how families recounted the prophecies pointing to the Savior that was to come. In reading the story of Jesus’s birth, we continued the tradition of retelling His birth from a virgin in the town of David and all to God’s glory.
Martin and Brian led us through December to the annual celebration by recounting essential doctrines: the Trinity, how we are created for God’s glory, and how we shattered that glory with sin. God provided the solution for our sin in the form of Jesus—our one and only way to redemption.
These are fundamental doctrines of our faith. Yet throughout the Christmas season, I was bombarded not with truth but with Santa, excessive consumption, and annoyingly odd commercial images intended to make me think of a smell. There was no mention outside of church of Jesus.
Israel was given festivals and commemorations precisely to help them remember. The Christian church was given Communion to remember Christ’s death and resurrection. Christmas will cease to be a remembrance if we let it.
So when we study doctrine, we keep it firm in our understanding and the core of our faith. As Martin pointed out, even within the churches of America, too many fail to understand the divinity of Christ and what he has done for us. The power of the Gospel is rooted in the truth of God’s revelation of himself.
Charles Schulz got pushback from his producer about including New Testament Scripture in the Peanuts special. But he countered with, “Bill, if we don’t, who will?” That remains our question today. If we don’t hold to the truth, if we don’t speak it and remember it, who will?
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