What's going on here?

Back in the late 80s my daughter and son-in-law were traveling from Brainerd to Barneveld, Wis., to Grandpa and Grandma's house for Christmas. Now Matt (about 3 years old) had fallen fast asleep in the car. When the folks arrived at the outskirts of LaCrosse, they stopped to change drivers and as the car rolled to a stop, Matt woke up and looking out the window and seeing the beautiful display of Christmas lights he said, "What's going on here?"

Perhaps that's the question all of us ought to be asking as we move through the Christmas season with all the lights and shopping and parties accompanied by Christmas carols. "What is going on here?" What is the season of music and displays and gift giving all about? As I said in a sermon this past Sunday, "Something is happening," and what is happening is that the God of heaven and earth has come in Christ into the mess and muddle of our world to save us. In the birth of Jesus God came to be with us and to show us the way to go "home," home to the God who created us to live with Him now and for eternity.

"What's going on here" is God in action, not to punish us but to care for us and eventually die on a cross that we might be forgiven and then on Easter to be restored to life that we might live eternally. What is going on here is the best news any of us could ever hear. Unable to overcome the forces of evil, God took on the Evil One so that each of us can live victorious lives no longer captive to what I call "The Big Three - sin, death and the power of the devil."

Yes, in the coming of Christmas something has happened and the world will never be the same as God moves this old world toward the day when all things will be made new. And what's going on here is for you. That's something to write home about.

Amen.