Good morning! Can you believe we only have 10 days left until Christmas? I can’t! We finally finished most of our Christmas shopping yesterday after church, though I think I still have one or two little things to pick up.

Just like the weather we’ve been having here in Nashville, this holiday season has felt very “mixed.” We walk outside our doors to see Christmas bows hanging on the mailboxes and lights adorning the houses and people wearing their favorite snowman sweaters and then we come in, turn the television on and hear all of the bad news and terms like “bankruptcy”, “unemployment”, and “recession.” I don’t know about you but it doesn’t always help make my Christmas spirits very bright.

Add to that the feelings that many of us are experiencing this Christmas with husbands having just deployed or still being away, and it makes you want to just bury your head under your pillow and not come out!

But there is one thing that we can find in Christmas this season that no economic turmoil or deployment-directed blues can take away from us. And that is hope.

Let’s think back to that first Christmas and what hope meant then and what it means today. Before that first Christmas (and before the New Testament started being recorded), more than 400 years passed. Many call these years the “silent years” because no inspired writings from God came to us from that time. But there was war. And lots of changes, and I would assume a lot of uncertainty and unrest. God’s chosen people, the Jews, must have wondered what in the world was happening, especially when the Romans took over.

Think about it, though. It was during the rule of the Romans that Jesus was born. And it was through a family line that wasn’t exactly polished and twinkling with perfection. There was Tamar, who had an incestuous moment with her father-in-law, Judah; there was Ruth, a stranger from another country; there was Bathsheba, who had an affair with a king and who lost her first child because of her sin.

Not exactly the most inspiring family tree, is it? But God used it to bring out the greatest hope our world has ever known. The birth of His Son, Jesus Christ. And it was from that birth, that all of creation can be thankful for.

Part 2 tomorrow…

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