A Glorious NightNäide

While life these days can feel fast-paced all year long, there’s something about the Christmas season that kicks the busyness into high gear. Maybe it’s the holiday activities and parties, or it could be the shopping deadlines, or trying to make special memories. Many of us crash into Christmas morning, exhausted and delirious. It’s easy to forget that each one of us is living in the middle of God’s grand story—a story that began as all good stories do: in the beginning.

Christmas, and the hope Jesus brings, wasn’t an afterthought; it was in God’s heart from the foundation of the world. We see God’s promise of hope at the beginning, even during a devastating failure. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, sin spread far and wide and would make its way into every human heart. Heartache, sickness, death, and brokenness became commonplace. In the midst of that sad moment, God told Adam and Eve about a child who would be born and crush the serpent’s head. That offspring was, of course, Jesus, and that serpent was none other than Satan. With those words, God made hope a part of the human story. That hope came with Jesus at Christmas, and it now lives within all those who know Him.