The focus turns to Christmas. And it couldn’t come at a better time.

The days are getting darker, both literally and figuratively. Incompetent and unethical people are about to take the reins of power. It looks like all is lost.

And then the Babe comes.

Christmas is on its way.

We talked last week about a world in which God intervenes.

And God does, indeed, intervene, and the biggest intervention of all is the Babe.

And I find my heart lifted.

“With God, all things are possible,” the angel said to Mary.

And I am filled with hope.

Because I know where the power truly lies.

The Babe is invincible.

There is no power against his love.

They killed him.

They tacked him to a tree and watched him die.

Yet, he is with us today.

He runs the whole show.

And fighting him is like standing in a rushing river with your arms stretched out to stop the water.

The Spirit of the Babe is moving the world in one direction only.

Toward community.

Toward unity.

Toward love.

I’m not just confident. I’m in good spirits. I’m feeling all “Christmasy.”

I am sitting here tonight planning our Christmas concert. I just added an ancient carol.

It has in it the line, “There came a flower bright amidst the cold of winter.”

There are hard times ahead. But we will move through them.

The Babe is born.

(Christmas Concert, Sat., Dec. 21—6:00 p.m.)

In the midst of the disaster that has come upon us, there are some things we must remember.

This is still God’s world.

And God, too, has intentions for us as individuals and for the world.

And God does intervene.

I cannot talk of God’s grand design. But I know a thousand stories of God’s intervention in individual lives.

This is from Rosemary Thornton, author of Remembering the Light.

One night when I was 22, I was driving on a dark road with a light rain falling. Visibility was poor.

I had an old car, and the defroster didn’t work too well.

I wasn’t going very fast, but I heard a voice urgently demand that I stop the car.

I ignored it at first.

But the second time, the voice was yelling and said, “Stop the car now!”

I didn’t know what was happening, but I slammed on the brakes. The car stopped immediately.

I put it in park and exited the vehicle. Less than two feet in front of the car stood a tiny toddler in only a diaper and looking very frightened.

I scooped him up in my arms and moved to the side of the road and stood in the rain, holding him close as I figured out what to do next.

Rosemary says that’s when the child’s mother ran from a nearby house, screaming and crying. She had fallen asleep on the couch and awoke to find her baby gone.

God, too, has intentions.

God does intervene to work God’s will.

We are, at all times, loved, watched over, cared for. That’s my comfort in hard times. Be encouraged.

Trust God.

There are some 40,000 Christian denominations worldwide. Most of us are familiar with 15 or 20 of them.

It sounds neighborly to say that we all basically believe in the same God.

But that’s not true.

The God I believe in is summed up in Matthew 5:38-48 and Luke 6:27-36 (mostly the same material). I call this “core scripture.”

Here, Jesus gives us His picture of God as loving all people all the time. He says God is kind even to “the ungrateful and the wicked.”

The word for this kind of love is “grace.”

Unconditional love.

And Jesus says this is the only kind of love that makes a difference.

Loving those who love you is easy. “What reward do you get” for doing that? He asks.

Many Christians do not share this understanding of God.

How do I know?

We all know Christians who believe things that contradict Jesus.

Many Christians believe God destroyed the world with a flood.

They believe God decided creation was a mistake. God goofed!

Then God tried to correct the blunder by wiping out everything that would not fit on a big boat.

And then regretted that!

This angry, unhappy, vengeful, mistake-prone God is not the God we know in Jesus Christ.

This is not the God who loves all people all the time. If Jesus is right about God, the Flood Story is wrong.

So—

Which do you choose?

• • •

Try St. Matthew.

We choose Jesus.

Thanksgiving service at 11:00. Dinner after.

The election is over, but I am writing this on Monday, so I have no idea who won.

So—this is not Friday’s Word.

I have to get the church newsletter to Jason on Monday and will wait until Wednesday to post Friday’s Word with the Star Telegram.

I will share that post with our newsletter folk later.

It’s on our minds—here, four days before.
The great Carl Jung, noted psychiatrist, said that, in a crisis, we could depend on only 40 percent of the population to act rationally.
We know already that 46 percent of Americans will not act rationally. They support someone who is clearly racist, vengeful, and cruel.
They have made a firm commitment to values that are nowhere close to Christian.

I used to think we were getting better. I thought people had become less racist, less ugly to the neighbor.
Now, I don’t know.
We may be worse.

There was a time when anyone who admired Hitler would not be considered for any job.
Now, 46 percent of our people don’t seem to care.
And here’s the sad thing:
Most of those people go by the name Christian.

That would suggest to us that something is seriously wrong in the church.
Not in all churches—but in many churches, even in whole denominations.

We need an explanation.
We need to figure out why so many Christians are so accepting of racism, vengeance, and cruelty.
And I do think I know. God, in the Old Testament, is often pictured as racist, vengeful, and cruel.

And for the biblical inerrantists, all scripture is equal. They feel free to choose that vengeful image of God over the God of grace we have in Jesus.
The Gospel has no priority at all with many Christians.
They think God hated the Amalekites, so they can hate immigrants.

Lord, save us.