Tommy Cash - December 17, 2017
The Light of Christmas
Who doesn't love Christmas lights? Light is one of the central images of the Christmas season, but sometimes we forget what the light points to: that the darkness of sin is coming to an end. That God is up to something new. That WE are called to be that light in the world! As we prepare for Christmas, what does it look like for us to shine the light of God's hope into the world?
From Series: "To Be Continued"
Advent is the season in which we prepare to welcome Jesus into the world. It's a season of hope - the light has not come, but it is coming into the world. It's the time of day just before the sun peeks over the horizon. As we anticipate Jesus' birth, we come to realize that God's story didn't end at Christmas - it was only beginning. And the story is still being told today - a story of love, hope and promise. What does it mean to say that God is still telling the great story of love through us?
More From "To Be Continued"
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Can we talk about exorcising the devil? (It’s going to get weird, but not in the way you think.)
Last summer, self-proclaimed Neo-Nazis staged at march in Charlottesville, WV. It was a watershed moment for many white Americans. For some reason, the fact that in 2017, hundreds of torch-bearing Neo Nazis could assemble and march was the proof that finally convinced many of us of what our fellow citizens of color had been saying for generations: America has never solved our race problem.
But the reality was that, though many of us were finally ready to admit we had a serious problem, no one seemed to know what to do about it. The evil of systemic racism just seemed too big, and there were so many opinions – everything from ‘burn it all down and start over’ to ‘maybe just go back to ignoring it and hope it will go away’.
The reaction to Charlottesville followed the same pattern as pretty much every other major conflict in recent memory, from school shootings to what to do about the Dreamers to even what news sources are trustworthy. A few of us write major opinion pieces (or find one we like) and share it on social medial, sparking a war of words waged in the comments following. The rest of us just sort of step away from social media for a few days and watch cat videos until the hubbub dies down.
Deep down, we’re all painfully aware that we as individuals aren’t actually going to do much of anything to solve these problems.
Even if our opinion on this particular issue is 100% right (and let’s be real: which of us can honestly claim that?!), we’re not presidents, congress persons or even state reps. We’re regular, everyday people without much influence outside our immediate circles.
And these evils seem so overwhelming, so big, so impossible they’re the one place we’re willing to say are “demonic”. Even for the more skeptical among us, it’s not hard to believe there’s something insidious behind school shootings, racial oppression and our general sense of insecurity. It would explain our feeling of powerlessness, our sense of being small cogs in a big machine that’s bent on doing us harm.
Let’s explore the Satanic roots of big, systemic evil. And more importantly, we’re going to see how this Satanic evil has been cast out, how it’s being cast out today and how we can cast it out wherever we find it.
God’s way to defeat the big evils in the world is through small acts of faithful sacrifice.
