CHAPTER ONE: THE PROPHECY

When one of our sons was a teenager, he decided that it would be a good idea to write a saying he liked on his bedroom wall in black Sharpie marker. Now as long as he lived there and it was his room, this wasn’t a big deal. But when he moved out, we wanted to turn that bedroom into a guest room (and having that large message on the wall was no longer acceptable). We repainted the room, covering up the message. Unfortunately for us, after a short time the message bled through the new paint… and so we put another coat of paint over it. In just a short time it bled through again. To date, we have added multiple coats of paint… and although faded, that message still shines through.

So often we do things we wish we hadn’t. Then (just like the message on the wall), we try to cover them up with something else. We try to hide what we are ashamed of by masking it with something else, and we actually can become pretty good at it.  But even if we are successful in hiding it from others, we know that it still exists… and it gnaws at us because we can’t seem to get rid of it.

Unfortunately, this practice of masking what we don’t want others to see or know seeps into our spiritual life as well. We hide what we don’t want people to see with church involvement, religious practice, or going through the motions during worship services. Everything looks good and right, but deep down inside we know that what we are hiding is still there and is gnawing at our spirit. We don’t want it to be the case, but sometimes it is.

God knew that the Kingdom was broken and that in our own power we couldn’t fix the problem. That is the beauty of the Christmas season. In this season, we celebrate that God set into motion his promise and plan to restore humankind back to himself. All of the things that the prophet Isaiah wrote concerning the coming Messiah were realized in the Christmas narrative, but it is up to us.

God wants to restore all that was broken and taken, but it requires our obedience. It requires us to put aside the masks—the “religious” practices—and to allow him to erase what we try to hide. When we do this, we can enjoy the benefits of God’s restoration. He exchanges our shame with confidence. He exchanges our pain with joy. He takes our mess and he gives us what we need to live our life in his Kingdom without the fear of our past or our future.