the empty chair...

Christmas is going to be different this year. It already is. My sister sent photos of the decorating festivities at dad's. My heart caught in my throat when I saw this picture. You see, that is mom's chair. She should be sitting there watching her grandsons decorate the tree. Or leaning over handing them decorations and directing them to the next empty spot. I flash forward to Christmas Eve and the time we normally celebrate together. Her chair will be empty as we sit around the table.

As I've been shopping for Christmas gifts I find myself reaching out to pick up a gift that mom would love and then stopping mid-air. Opening gifts Christmas Eve night there will be no gifts from mom. She will never add another piece to the nativity set she started for me. As wave after wave hit of the many voids we will experience this year, I started asking God how we would make it. Almost audibly He stopped me...mom is in heaven and Christmas is about Who came.

You see, 2000 years ago God gave a gift. His Son had stepped down from His throne in heaven to our messed up world. Heaven experienced a void...an empty chair if you will. Through the void of heaven, we experienced the fullness of God. "This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him." (I John 4:9) Do you see it? Christmas is about a tangible God. He literally traded places with us. The Divine stepped into humanity and bore the past, present, and future. In talking about His death Jesus states, "But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." (Jn 12:32) This passage foreshadows Jesus' death on the cross. What about the cross will draw all men? I believe Isaiah 53 depicts fully God's plan for the cross. "Who believes what we've heard and seen? Who would have thought God's saving power would look like this? The servant grew up before God - a scrawny seedling, a scrubby plant in a parched field. There was nothing attractive about him, nothing to cause us to take a second look. He was looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand. One look at him and people turned away. We looked down on him, thought he was scum. But the fact is, it was our pains he carried - our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us. We thought he brought it on himself, that God was punishing him for his own failures. But it was our sins that did that to him, that ripped and tore and crushed him - our sins! He took the punishment, and that made us whole. Through his bruises we get healed. We're all like sheep who've wandered off and gotten lost. We've all done our own thing, gone our own way. And God has piled all our sins, everything we've done wrong, on him, on him. He was beaten, he was tortured, but he didn't say a word. Like a lamb taken to be slaughtered and like a sheep being sheared, he took it all in silence. Justice miscarried, and he was led off - and did anyone really know what was happening? He died without a thought for his own welfare, beaten bloody for the sins of my people. They buried him with the wicked, threw him in a grave with a rich man, Even though he'd never hurt a soul or said one word that wasn't true. Still, it's what God had in mind all along, to crush him with pain. The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin so that he'd see life come from it - life, life, and more life. And God's plan will deeply prosper through him. Out of that terrible travail of soul, he'll see that it's worth it and be glad he did it. Through what he experienced, my righteous one, my servant, will make many "righteous ones," as he himself carries the burden of their sins. Therefore I'll reward him extravagantly - the best of everything, the highest honors - Because he looked death in the face and didn't flinch, because he embraced the company of the lowest. He took on his own shoulders the sin of the many, he took up the cause of all the black sheep. (The Message)

Christ coming as a babe in a manger, led to Christ walking the earth as a man and the road to Calvary. He could draw all men to Himself on the cross because He bore all of the sin AND the consequences of sin. He intimately knows your sorrows just as He intimately knows mine. He was crushed so that we could have life. For each blow that we are dealt, remember the cross. Remember that Christ already bore the pain, He was bruised for us and God exalted Him. This Christmas, remember for a moment, heaven experienced a void so that we could experience a Saviour.