The season of promises

The season of Christmas is a season of giving -- giving cookies, giving gifts and giving promises. The season of Christmas is a season of good cheer and good will toward men. Christmas is a reminder of a promise that was given centuries before. The season of Christmas also marks the beginning of promises kept.

Thousands of years before there was a manger, shepherds and a young couple chosen by God, there were prophets. A prophet speaks for the Lord to the people on issues of the day and of promises to come. The prophet Isaiah spoke saying, "For unto us a child is born, Unto us a son is given." (Isaiah 9:6)

The promise of Christmas is a gift of hope from the creator to his creation. It is a gift of the sacrifice the son made by choosing to step out of heaven and take on the tender and fragile flesh of an infant. It is a gift to restore, remake and renew men and women, boys and girls into new creatures, a new image.

The promise of Christmas was not first made when the star appeared or when the prophets said a child would be born. The promise of Christmas was made when God walked through the Garden of Eden looking for the creation he made in his image and said, "Adam, where are you?"

We each bear the mark of our creator (Genesis 1:27), yet we must now be remade because we are marked by sin. We must be renewed because we are marred. We must be sought out because, left to ourselves, we hide and blame.

The child that is born, the son that is given is God gifting his creation by asking all who will listen, "Where are you? Why are you hiding from me?" Christmas will be Christmas without the cold and snow. Christmas will be Christmas without the lights, the sounds and the smells. Christmas is Christmas because God has given. Christmas is Christmas because God the son stepped out of heaven. The promise was made. The promise was kept.

Rob Hurtgen is a husband, father and serves as associate pastor at the First Baptist Church in Jackson.