Beyond Christmas

BEYOND CHRISTMAS by Wayne Dixon My grandfather used to say, “They always want to keep Jesus in the manger. Why won’t they let Him grow up?” Beyond Christmas is Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and the Ascension, and the Second Coming. My grandfather believed he would live to see the Second Coming, and it threw me for a loop, when grandpa died when I was still an adolescent. Was grandpa wrong or did Jesus come for him in his time? I have since come to realize that Christ comes to us again and again. He comes to us in history. He comes to us in experience. And He comes to us in the future. That first Christmas is rooted in history in the fullness of time. “I bring you tidings of great joy,” the angel announced out of the blue to startled shepherds. That message continues to reverberate throughout history, dividing time into before and after. We are the inheritors of that legacy. Civilization since is embedded with that event, an inescapable part of our culture. Christ comes to us personally in experience. The apostle John wrote that Christ is the light that lighteth every man born into the world. That light comes to us as “a lamp to our feet and a light to our pathway,” as my grandfather wrote in my birthday Bible at age eleven. The light still shines 2,012 years later, an unbroken beam passing through history to our present experience. And what of the future? “No man knoweth the day nor the hour,” the Bible records. The future is often obscured by clouds of current events swirling about in threatening storms. But the last words of the Bible voice the enduring hope, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” That legacy of Christmas remains with us. Even in the most profane circumstances the echoing carols remind us of a resilient heritage beneath the surface. Should we keep Christ in Christmas amidst all commercialism and controversy? Of course, by all means. But more importantly let us keep Christ beyond Christmas. As they sang at my grandfather’s funeral, “We praise thee O God, for the Son of thy love, for Jesus who died and is now gone above. Hallelujah, thine the glory. Hallelujah, amen. Revive us again.”