2020 has been a year of death. Not as much actual death as the reaction and initial speculation belied, although that did happen accompanied by magnified attention which does nothing to alleviate sorrow. Rather death came in hopes deferred or destroyed. Weddings that couldn't happen. Celebrations cancelled. Trips never taken. Businesses and careers ended. Relationships broken. Truly a pandemic of lost hope swept throughout the world this year and leaves behind a global trauma that no one can say from how we can recover.
A couple millennia ago on a road in dusty Palestine two men explained to a third how a year had culminated in hopes and dreams dashed upon the ground. A man had come and for three glorious years he had spoken of a life beyond anything they could imagine. Freedom. A kingdom they longed for, although they glossed over "not of this world". Even as they didn't always understand his descriptions such as eating flesh and drinking blood, they clung to the belief that their imaginings of the longed-for Messiah had finally embodied themselves in this one man. After all, they had a rich history of a Red Sea parted, the sun standing still, and walls falling down. So what if Isaiah mentioned bruised and battered in his colourful description of the coming Saviour? No doubt God knew what was needed in this time.
The two men shared how people followed him, leaving their jobs and livelihood to wander throughout the land, learning at his feet. How he sent them out to share his words and they found every need provided and saw miracles. He even raised a dead man! Those three years were exhilarating and everything in them knew that the end would come for the oppressors and the promised land would once again blossom. The Romans and their puppet Herods's days were numbered.
Everything they hoped and dreamed, in one short day died. He died. He who had raised the dead, made the blind see, healed lifelong diseases, knew their deepest heart's desires, was laid dead in a tomb. Where could they go from here? They had staked everything they knew on him and nothing remained. To accept the disheartening truth would rearrange their world and their aching hearts could not see how to believe again. Where was Emmanuel in this moment? Why hadn't he done what he said he would do? And what to make of the extraordinary missing body?
Then He spoke. In the midst of death He showed how God is the One who does the impossible. He is the One who takes a hopeless situation and brings hope. Freedom to captives. Fruit to barren wombs. Life to dead people. And most miraculous of all, redemption to sinners. He spoke to the two men, showed them how, in a world consumed with death, the only way was to turn death upside down, beat the enemy at his own game. And still the two men wondered, struggling to believe how Emmanuel could come in such a package.
At the table, their eyes still clouded with confusion, He took an ordinary loaf of bread and broke it. He blessed it. And their burning hearts leapt as their eyes opened and they saw that His way of bringing dreams to reality took their narrow desires and transformed them, fulfilling them beyond any wild imagination they ever had.
Look up from the dusty road. In a year full of death and dung, can we see Him working to not simply fulfil the little dreams we have but to use us--if we are willing--to bring hope to many? As His death brought life, can we die to selfish habits and live to glorious joy? He is Emmanuel, even when the road is not the one we would have chosen. He is coming.
