Dear Partner,
I’m beginning to really dislike the Christmas season but I’ve also never loved the Christmas season more. Let me explain what that means.
Our daughter Morgan was born two weeks before Christmas and with each passing year her birthday can be an emotional roller coaster. My Dad passed away right before Christmas and his birthday is December 28th. This year we lost a dear friend during the holiday season.
Fortunately, the more I dislike the Christmas season the more I truly love the meaning of Christmas. The former head of Coca Cola once said, “Never let your memories be greater than your dreams.” One really bad part of living an undeserved, unbelievably great life is a lot of really good memories. The downside of that is I can spend half my day now pining for the “good old days”, exhausted because “it’ll never be like that again” or in a haze living in a memory from Christmas past.
You’ve heard the phrase, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” My dad used it all the time, especially during Saturday Celebrations at HYC before he’d take an offering for the artist who was performing. He was actually quoting Al Jolson who first used the phrase in a song he wrote. Before Jolson ever wrote the song, he used it one evening when he was performing. He let the overflow crowd know at intermission that while he had been good up until then, the best was still to come.
That’s why I love Christmas. It’s a reminder of better days still to come.
In Ed Hindson’s excellent book “Courageous Faith,” he frames the birth of Christ like this: “Divine hope lit up the night.” In essence, God said with the birth of his son “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
When Jesus left his disciples and said before his departure “I’m going to prepare a place for you,” I wonder if he thought to himself, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
When John penned the words, “no eye hath seen or ear heard,” he may have thought, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
In Revelation 12 there’s an account of the Christmas story that you generally don’t hear at a Christmas eve service. It’s a background scene into spiritual battles on a different plane that Mary was caught in the middle of that first Christmas. Reading the passage gave me a far deeper appreciation for Mary. While I can’t begin to understand the physical difficulties of giving birth to a child, let a lone giving birth in a barn, with no doctor, no medication, all after traveling on a donkey for endless miles, my guess is that fails in comparison to the battle that Satan must have inflicted on her that evening focusing all his attention on trying to stop the birth of Messiah.
I wonder as Mary watched Jesus grow, if she thought to herself, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” When she told him to turn the water to wine and others were amazed by it she thought that same thing. When others were amazed at the way he taught, when she heard rumors of the blind seeing and deaf hearing, the dead living again - she may have thought to herself, “That was good, but based on what I’ve been through and what I’ve seen God do in the past, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
So Christmas 2020 offers you and I the chance to not only reflect on memories of a Christmas from years gone by, but also to dream. Make room for some even greater dreams for 2021. Don’t let your memories serve as road blocks to future dreams, let them serve as runways to future endeavors.
Wishing you the best for 2021 season and grateful for your part in making the dreams for
HYC in the coming year a reality.
Merry Christmas!
Craig