I love this time of year. The leaves are changing, the weather is cooling down and my very favorite holiday is right around the corner...Christmas. I know, not very original but I love it. I love the time with family and most importantly, the reason for our celebration...the birth of our Savior. Tonight I was thinking about how Christmas has always been my favorite holiday but I really am excited for next year when I get to see it through the eyes of my child. Is there anything more special to a child than Christmas? I still love the Christmas season as much as I always have but its a different love. I guess its a deeper appreciation of the meaning and values behind it. I'd even venture to say that I love it more now that I'm an adult but I love those rare occasions when we as grown-ups get to experience Christmas through the eyes of a child.
I started thinking about all this tonight at camp. I'm here with my team, surrounded by about 450 7th and 8th grade students and over 100 volunteers. I love our camps because I always walk away feeling spiritually refreshed (though physically and mentally exhausted!). This weekend, the speaker talked about the story of God. He said that every story has a setting, a tension, a solution and a resolution. Our setting in God's story is our world that He created to be perfect, with us not being a PART of creation but the POINT of creation. He created us in His image and created all of this for us. The problem, or the tension, was that He gave us choice and we chose poorly. We chose ourselves over Him. Tonight, he talked about the solution. The beautiful gift of salvation, given to us freely by a God who loves is so incredibly that He sent His Son to take our place on a sinner's cross.
At this point in my faith journey, I know this story backwards and forwards. As mature Christians, we tend to take this amazing truth for granted after time, forgetting (or at least becoming de-sensitized from) the true significance of the sacrifice. We hear it so many times in so many different ways that we truly lose our sensitivity to the awesome meaning behind the story. God WILLINGLY gave His only Son for us. The Creator of the universe humbled Himself to our level to save us from the death that would surely result from our sinful behavior. Even while we continue to sin, He sacrificed so that we could be with Him in eternity. Sadly, over time we numb to that awesome truth.
But every now and then, God shows up in a new way. Sometimes its big, sometimes its subtle. He shows up though and allows us to see His truth through new eyes. Even better than new eyes, He allows us to see it through the eyes of a new believer, of a child. Tonight God showed me once again how amazing the truth of my salvation is. And as if that weren't enough, He still has given me the desires of my heart. Is that unbelievable? He gave me life, took away death. He gave me salvation and eternity with Him in paradise. That would have been much more than I could ever even begin to deserve but then He gave me more! He gave me a blessed life here too! A husband who loves me and a baby growing inside me. After He had already given me His world, He gave me more. It hit me and I started to cry, tears of joy and peace and surrender. And I just looked up at His glorious face, smiling and seeing my Father smile back at me.
Ask God to show Himself to you through the eyes of a child, the eyes of a new believer and wait with baited breath for His amazing revelation. How great is our God?
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