For all Seasons

A blank canvas is colored and filled with strokes and directional shadings by an artist’s loving hand desperately trying to capture the essence of the baby Jesus asleep in the manger nestled in the center of his painted interpretation of the scene of a miraculous birth in a stable.  A writer carefully crafts descriptive phrases and words, intently and with purpose … trying to invoke the deep meanings and significant realities of God coming in the Flesh to bring favor, grace, and salvation to a sinful world.

A young child looks affectionately at the tiny baby in a “Nativity” on a small table delighting in all the charm of the story and the characters but lacking a full appreciation what a Savior is. An elderly gentleman nearby yearns for the phone to ring … for anyone to remember him in this season of remembering.

Across the city, a waitress collects her tips at the end of her shift wondering why in the season of generosity, her meager earnings are coming up shorter than the average day at the diner. Just outside of town a rancher beds down his cattle with fresh straw in his decaying old barn and smiles at the recollection that a place of animals was chosen for the Christmas “Birthday of the King.”

In a gleaming tower of steel and glass in a far off urban landscape, a very successful self-made man who has made his way to the top of being highly successful, wonders why he feels so unsatisfied with all he has amassed. A few miles away along an eroding ravine in a shack of rusted tin and twisted boards, a family shares a bag of decaying oranges … delighted at their unexpected find in the city dump and talking of provision and hope because they have a living “King” born on this day who knows their names.

An emotionally broken couple sits contemplating the severing of a relationship that they once believed God had put together lost midst the uncertainty of any real hope. Pain, suffering, conflicts both large and small and trivial and majorly significant seem to daunt the promise of the season and yet these aspects of life have always been present on the earth.

In a jail cell, hopelessly confining and limited, a young man’s face brightens as reads of a “liberty for the captive” from an ancient passage in an unfamiliar Bible, as he realizes a spiritual release can come to his heart regardless of the bleakness of his surroundings.  Just a few miles away on a foreboding street in a dark car, a young woman considers where the “Christmas Star” can be found, so she might find some possible brightness for a path out of the overpowering darkness she is sensing and feeling in her soul.

The Christmas season is filled with countless life scenarios, too numerous to possibly list: those of hopelessness and hope, discouragement and promise, losing and giving, sin and forgiveness, hurt and love, discord and peace. The Christmas season is a time of contrasts as it brings forth a myriad of feelings forgotten and remembered, repressed and expressed, fractured by circumstance and those bursting forth with promise. In all realms, in all stories and places, the Savior comes for more than a season as He brings forgiveness, redemption, peace, joy and life.

Even as Christmas seasons come and go … the Jesus who came as a baby and became the Savior of the world, never forsakes His giving to us.  Jesus Christ came in the season of Christmas but what He gives is not seasonal in any way. He gives far more than any and all of seasons of all time can contain.  More than can be captured in thought, words or representations. More than can be recognized, appreciated or even understood.  Jesus Christ redeems, heals and restores all the moments in all the seasons from all their brokenness, pain, discouragement, frustration, heartache, suffering and an endless array of all that would come against us throughout our days on the earth.

The hope, promise, love, peace and joy that God bestowed by His favor through the gift of His Son was never meant to be found in the characters in the Christmas story, the place, the star, the day, the situations, the timing, the conditions or even in the season. All that God longs to give to the world by His loving favor was and is always to be found in the Son.

God’s full favor comes to us, as we become His children through His extravagant love being poured into the faith relationship we have with Jesus Christ the Son. Through Jesus Christ, we are forgiven of all sin and blessed throughout all the days and seasons of our lifetime, eventually coming into eternal life. 

The gift of a Savior is for far more than any and all of the Christmas seasons … whether past, present or yet to come. Jesus Christ the Savior of the world, who came so long ago, still comes to any and all people in every season who call upon His name.  Jesus Christ is more than a baby born in a manger, more than a seasonal event, more than a reason for the season … for He is the Savior of all people, all seasons and for all time.