All I want for Christmas, I didn't get.

Brethren,

                Did you get what you wanted for Christmas?

Have you ever noticed that there aren’t a lot of stories in the Bible about people who couldn’t perform miracles, who didn’t get they wanted?  Yes, I know there’s that time when Jesus couldn’t do any miracles, it says because the people had no faith in Mark 6, but even there he still put his hands on some people and healed them.  I know there was that time when Peter couldn’t walk on water but then he could with Jesus.  There was that time that the disciples couldn’t drive out a demon, but Jesus could with prayer.    Do you remember that time that Moses lifted his staff and walked into the Red Sea and got wet (I made that up.  It’s not in the Bible.)?

How about that time you prayed to God for something in his name and it didn’t happen even if it wouldn’t have been miraculous, like praying for someone you love to turn back to the Lord.  Or maybe you’ve prayed that God might help someone to forgive you, and they didn’t.  In the Bible, I wish God could have sprinkled a couple of stories about not getting what we wanted when we asked for it.  

Turns out that in his infinite wisdom he did.

Paul tells us that all of Creation is waiting for the sons of God to be revealed, and it still is presumably.  Paul also longed to see a bunch of people and wasn’t able to before the end.  Imagine Moses, this tired old fossil, walking up a mountain to see a land flowing with milk and honey, a Promised Land, that he wasn’t able to see after 40 years of anticipation.  You think he plead for God to change his mind?  How does it feel that God didn’t give you what you really wanted now?  That car, health insurance, life without a softball-sized tumor, life without divorce, life with both parents:  Do you think your hurts and hang-ups, addictions and heartaches can stand up to Moses’?

How about this one?  God, having made all things, made you in his image.  He created you to be like him and he is wild about you.  He thinks you are fantasmic.  He loves you with an everlasting love.  He loves each and every hair on your head.  Yeah, he got what he really wanted. 

But think of all those people on the ‘naughty list.’  God loves them too and a lot of them aren’t going to be under the Christmas tree.  Millions won’t make it into his stocking.  All he wants for Christmas is us yet the world is full of the faithless and the enemies of God who he never really thought of as enemies.  Those far from God, ‘WON’T be home for Christmas.’  When you think about what you didn’t get that you really wanted, think about the yearning God has for the sinner.  See if you can wrap one up for him next Christmas.