We forget. In the middle of our own agendas, we forget. Consumed by the incessantly shifting tides of the culture, we forget. Caught up in the ever-changing maze of politically correct ideologies, we forget. With bills looming and jobs teetering and marriages faltering, we forget. With value systems crumbling and leadership charting a course to places dark and foreboding, we forget. With crime rising and hope dwindling and common sense disappearing, we forget.
We forget. When we fix our eyes upon the world around us, we will forget. When we vest our hope in man-made institutions and root the entirety of our confidence in the strategies of men, we will forget. When we invest our lives in hoarding material wealth and exhaust our resources in the pursuit of successes that catch the eyes and admiration of those around us, we will forget. Oh yes, we will forget.
We forget. When we demand our own way we become wayward. When we are swept up by the greed of our own minds we will be swept away by that very same greed. When we lay claim to life as ours and ours alone, we lay claim to the foundations of our own demise. When we resolutely state that we are the captains of our own ships and we flamboyantly declare that we need no other captain, we have set sail for rocky shoals and certain disaster. We forget.
We forget. When we declare that there is no God, we declare that the unparalleled ability to ponder something as vast as God, as well as our equally profound ability to reject something that magnificent is nothing more than an outgrowth of evolution. And if we forget something as great as God, we are well on our way to forgetting all other such things marvelous and magnificent for none are greater than Him. We forget. Oh yes, we will forget to our own detriment.
And in time, we will forget that we forgot. We will forget that there was anything to forget in the first place. And in the forgetting, we will take all of the marvelous things in life and we will slowly and methodically lose them. In the tragedy of losing them, we will distill our lives down to the rancid mediocrity of human beings who forgot everything they should have remembered. We will forget because we don’t care. We will forget because we don’t make time to remember. We will forget because it was more convenient and less demanding to forget. We will forget because we foolishly deemed other small and miniscule things as greater than truly great things. We will forget out of carelessness and will forget because of selfishness. We forget. Oh yes, we will forget and we will be the poorer for it.
Christmas is God Refusing to Forget
Yet, the beauty of Christmas is that God didn’t forget. Not now. Not ever. Despite man’s incessant proclivity to forget God, God never forgot. Despite man’s demands for a faith that excluded God, God never forgot. In light of man’s arrogance and the relentless insults hurled at God by both the actions and attitudes of men, God never forgot. Even though mankind has outright rejected God and cast Him into the realm of fairytales, myth and places of cultural irrelevance, God still never forgot nor does He forget. And when man declared himself as God and attempted to usurp God, entirely expunging Him from every conceivable area of life . . . even then God did not forget. Not now. Not ever.
Christmas is God remembering. Christmas is God’s refusal to forget. Christmas is God’s declaration that He will never forget. Christmas was God deliberately placing Himself squarely in the middle of humanity when that very same humanity sought to remove Him squarely from the middle of everything by any means possible. Christmas is God’s greatest gift ever given to mankind despite the thoughtless abuses of mankind in their mad march to forget. Christmas is God’s staunch refusal to forget, and it is His forever commitment to forgive. It is His commitment never to forget even though we are reckless enough to do so. No, God doesn’t forget. And Christmas is a powerful and compelling proof of that reality.
We forget. Oh yes, we certainly forget. Maybe, just maybe it’s time to remember once again.
© 2014 Craig Lounsbrough, M.Div., Licensed Professional Counselor