Possible Impossibilities

Many times during these coming days of holiday preparations we are certain to hear people say, “This is what the season is all about!” Maybe we’ll say it ourselves: Through a misting of tears, perhaps, as we look over our family gathered at the table. Or at the end of a beautifully sung Christmas concert.

I’ve heard it most often when someone is talking about children. Some folks even say, “Christmas is for children.” Do they mean that Christmas is no more than a fairy-tale? It cannot be denied that December is chock-full of kid fun, from cartoon specials and candy treats to Santa and his sack.

Even the simple statement, “Let’s not lose the real meaning of Christmas,” points us to the manger where we find — a child! But the mere fact that Christmas is about the coming of a child does not make it childish. Before we ever come to the climatic episode of Christ’s birth, we ought to take the time to turn over and ponder for a moment a hidden rock of faith concealed in the story’s beginning.

Remember when the angel Gabriel told Mary of God’s plan, a plan which included her participation? It was totally out of sync with her plans and seemed humanly impossible. We’d all do well to remember that Mary was a bit perplexed — and shocked — hearing that she is about to bear a child. Before the multitude of angels announced Jesus’ birth — the “reason for the season” — this one angel told a lone young woman what all of this is going to do, to prove, to mean. Here’s the point of it all, Gabriel proclaimed: “Nothing will be impossible with God.“

This statement of faith hasn’t found its way into the messages on our Hallmark Christmas cards. But it is the explanation Mary received. It’s what the season reveals: “Nothing will be impossible with God.”

Children frequently regard their parents as being people for whom nothing seems impossible. Parents seem to know everything. And anything we needed or needed to know, they were able to provide.

The believer’s relationship with God has often been described as one of child and parent. “Our Father who art in heaven,” begins the most common prayer that many people pray. We are like the 3-year-old walking through life with our parents, needing and trusting them to provide everything. Children have little problem believing that with God nothing is impossible because they live it in their little lives every day.

But a part of growing up is the slow realization that parents don’t have all the answers to the world’s problems — or to ours. Believing that your parents can do anything is a fairy tale that fades.

It is unfortunate, though, when someone says, “Christmas is for children.”

If that is our attitude, then I fear that we are apt to miss Gabriel’s incredible statement to Mary: “For nothing will be impossible with God.” If Christmas is only for children, if we have grown beyond it, then what is Christmas for us?

The book of Daniel contains the well-known story of three young men who are threatened with death in the fiery furnace if they don’t worship foreign idols. They refuse to do so. The mighty King Nebuchadnezzar, who believes he holds their lives in his hands, asks them what god will save them. They answer: “It may be that our God will come and save us from your hand, but know this, even if it seems that God is going to let us be burned up, we will still believe!“

These three friends standing before the heat of the oven, and Mary kneeling in the shadow of the angel’s wings, accepted the grown-up truth about faith in God’s possibilities. Putting yourself in God’s hands means trusting in the promise that God will work all things for good in God’s way, in God’s time, according to God’s own purposes. It does not mean we will always understand what is happening in us, through us, to us — or why.

Mary’s belief in God’s possibilities led her to be an embarrassment to her family, unwed and pregnant. Later she watched as her Son was executed as a criminal. It was not an easy lot. The three men before the furnace did not assume their faith would save them. But they acknowledged that even death could not kill the hope within them.

The Christmas story is nothing like the Disney fairy tales where all your self-centered dreams come true. No rags-to-riches. No happily-ever-after that the world would understand.

Responding to the Christ Child … trusting the living Savior … does not guarantee that our cancer will be cured, our jobs will be secure or our children will all be above average. We aren’t wishing upon a star, we are being led by one. And that makes all the difference in how we understand our lives.

I remember an incident in which I learned of a man who was in the last stages of cancer. Someone who was a party to that conversation asked if the man belonged to a church, if he had a pastor to care for him. The response was that he left the church 30 years ago — after the loss of a second child. No further explanation was needed. All around us, even in our own church family we have those who have been crushed with despair and disappointment. The Christmas promise of God’s possibilities is challenging in the face of the tragedy, oppression and hopelessness the world can send our way. But the message of this season is clear: Nothing is impossible with God. The Christmas angels tell us there are no God-forsaken people or places. Emmanuel is here — God with us, and with us all the time.

In this Christmas season, as we hear the story again, we each must choose whether to receive it as fairy tale or truth. “For nothing will be impossible with God,” the angel said. We can only assume that includes turning our impossible hearts as well.

What do YOU think?  What impossible thing does God want to do in YOUR life?