The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas (13 page)

[Elijah said,] “You have refused to obey the commands of the LORD and have worshiped the images of Baal instead. Now summon all Israel to join me at Mount Carmel, along with the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah who are supported by Jezebel.”

So Ahab summoned all the people of Israel and the prophets to Mount Carmel. Then Elijah stood in front of them and said, “How much longer will you waver, hobbling between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him! But if Baal is God, then follow him!” But the people were completely silent.

Then Elijah said to them, “I am the only prophet of the LORD who is left, but Baal has 450 prophets. Now bring two bulls. The prophets of Baal may choose whichever one they wish and cut it into pieces and lay it on the wood of their altar, but without setting fire to it. I will prepare the other bull and lay it on the wood on the altar, but not set fire to it. Then call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the LORD. The god who answers by setting fire to the wood is the true God!” And all the people agreed.

1 KINGS 18:18-24

All of Advent, in the nave and the sanctuary, in the arching dome of a longing heart, it rises like a winding ribbon of incense: “Come, let us adore Him.”

Let us leave the wrapping and the decking and the performing and come, awe at God.

Your hands need not bring anything of your own making. What God wants for Christmas is simply your bended knee.

They say that when you waver between two opinions, between two gods, the literal Hebrew word for wavering means
sinking
. It’s our wavering between gods that has us sinking. It’s the wavering between the gods of things and the God of everything —that’s what has us flailing and drowning soundless in it all.

We were made to worship —our internal circuitry wired to worship. Every moment you live, you live bowed to something. And if you don’t choose God, you’ll bow down before something else —some banal Baal. Baal isn’t the name of one particular god; it’s the name of any generic god. Elijah confronted the people about their wavering, their sinking, between the God of Abraham and the Baal of rain. And for us, too, there are other Baals that can be our sinking. The Baal of success and the Baal of Pinterest, the Baal of perfection and the Baal of affirmation. It’s always
Baals that keep us from God, the Baals of work and agenda and accomplishment that keep us from prayer. We don’t pray enough only when we are practicing idol worship.

You can see how it goes —how there at the altars the Baal worshipers danced for rain. They strove and they flailed and they kept focused on trying to get all the steps just perfectly right —and that is how you ultimately know.

You know you have an idol whenever you have to perform.

You know you have a Baal that needs to be cut down whenever you cut yourself down. Whenever you slash yourself, you have an idol that needs to be slashed down.

Because that is what every idol ultimately wants: to make your blood run wild and dance you mad and drive you right into the unforgiving ground. Every idol wants you to be cut open for it.

But if you slow and still and wait, Advent whispers to you: there is one God who was cut open for you. He let His blood run so you can stop running. “The only way to overcome idols in your life,” beckons Tim Keller, “is to see that Jesus gives you freely what every other god says that you can only get through your performance. Jesus gives you through His blood what every other god demands through yours.”
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Jesus, the Gift, comes to
give
you freely through His passion what every other god forces you to
get
through your performance.

There in the nave, in the sanctuary, in the vaulting cathedral of your soul, you can hear how the notes come —one quaking, grateful note after another —as worship to the infant God who comes to the manger, the only God who comes to the wood on the altar, the God who takes the fire and who
is
the sacrifice to take you.

And you let everything go. And kneel. Kneel here and behold only Him —the only place where you can receive the gift of acceptance, so the gods of acceptance have no hold on you.

O come, let us adore Him . . .

The notes burning like a fire in the heart.

Think of the Baals in your life —things you set your heart on besides the one true God. What is one thing you can do today to loosen the grip of one of those idols in your life?

Give me the Love that leads the way

The faith that nothing can dismay,

The hope no disappointments tire,

The passion that will burn like fire

Let me not sink to be a clod

Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God.

AMY CARMICHAEL

What emotions are evoked in you when you realize that God doesn’t expect you to perform for Him —that He has already given you everything?

What sets God apart from every Baal, from every false god?

Set aside some time in the nave, in the sanctuary of your own heart, to come and adore Him.

Go . . . and deliver the message I have given you.

JONAH 3:2

The LORD gave this message to Jonah son of Amittai: “Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh. Announce my judgment against it because I have seen how wicked its people are.”

But Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction to get away from the LORD. He went down to the port of Joppa, where he found a ship leaving for Tarshish. He bought a ticket and went on board, hoping to escape from the LORD by sailing to Tarshish. . . .

Now the LORD had arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was inside the fish for three days and three nights. . . .

Then the LORD ordered the fish to spit Jonah out onto the beach.

The LORD spoke to Jonah a second time: “Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh, and deliver the message I have given you.”

This time Jonah obeyed the LORD’s command and went to Nineveh, a city so large that it took three days to see it all. On the day Jonah entered the city, he shouted to the crowds: “Forty days from now Nineveh will be destroyed!” The people of Nineveh believed
God’s message, and from the greatest to the least, they declared a fast and put on burlap to show their sorrow.

JONAH 1:1-3, 17; 2:10; 3:1-5

Storms track across the radars.

Snow falls on cedars somewhere up in the mountains, piles of white weighing down pines.

Clouds keep churning out on the ocean and up the battered coasts and along the ragged edges of you. Escape can seem alluring.

Advent can feel like an advent of crises. A whole string of Jonah-days brazenly begging you to head in the opposite direction, to get away from the dark underbelly of people and agendas and loving the unlovely and loud. Jonah finds a boat and buys a one-way ticket and sails due west, as if a man can ever escape the grace of God. As if finding your ship isn’t sometimes more like jumping ship.

A storm meets Jonah head-on in his.

It shakes the drowsing man awake —God’s coming, His Advent, always shakes us to awake. And it cups hold of Jonah’s wet, disoriented face and flat out startles him with the gift of utter dependence. Jonah-days chase you for tender reason. The Hound of Heaven storms after you till you have the gift you need.

You aren’t equipped for life until you realize you aren’t equipped for life. You aren’t equipped for life until you’re in need of
grace
.

In the moment of realizing your limitations, your shortcomings, your inescapable sins, all that you aren’t —in that
moment of surrendered lack, you’re given the gift you’d receive no other way: the gracious hand of an unlimited God. Repentance, turning around, is the only way to be ushered into grace.

Jonah turns from his running, owns his own complicity, sacrifices himself off the edge of the boat to save his boat mates. He descends the depths and tosses and turns three days in the curdling, churning belly of the fish before being heaved up alive on dry land.

Then he turns back. Turns back to God, turns back to Nineveh to plead with them, with everybody, to just turn back.

“We all want progress,” writes C. S. Lewis. But “if you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”
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