Lockdown Drills and Christmas Trees: The Contrast You Can Trust

Darkness sometimes looks to me like lockdown drills.  Twice a year.  And one time last year?  It wasn’t a drill.

What kind of world is this…where we have to practice a drill just in case someone comes to our elementary school and….

The doors have to be locked, lights turned off, and kids hidden silently behind bookshelves.

Away from the windows.

Away from the doors.

NO noise.

“It’s just in case someone comes on campus to try and sell drugs or something,” says Andy.  That “or something”.  It makes the knees weak and the hands shake; the stomach turn and the heart break.

They don’t tell them what it’s for.  But I know.  And it weighs heavy. 

What if…

What if I spent the rest of my life weeping and wishing I’d never set foot in that school to sign up my most precious ones…the ones I’d never see again?  When I think through what really could happen, what good is a lockdown drill when evil walks through the door?

It’s enough to make me want to have a lockdown in my own home.  We stay there, we never go out…we close the world OUT.

But I drive to school and I zip up jackets and kiss foreheads and watch as they walk across the cross walk.  I desperately pray protection over them, over their teachers. 

I get in the car…and sometimes?  Push down the lump that rises in my throat.  Push away the wild urge to sprint across that crosswalk, scoop up those boys with baby faces, and run away…never to come back. 

And it makes me start thinking: are they safe anywhere?

What kind of world is this?  It’s one where children are abused by their parents; daycare centers make headlines; police officers are targets; malls and movie theaters and schools become mass murder crime scenes. 

“WHY”?  we shriek.  We wildly grope for some kind of understanding that will steady us. It’s shocking and it’s horrifying and it’s absolutely unbearable. But according to the Bible, it’s just what you’d expect:

“The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” -Jeremiah 17:9

The world’s ugliest and darkest things prove the truth of God’s word.  If the human race is composed entirely of desperately sick hearts that are more deceitful…that lie more…than anything else, then murder, abuse, theft, hatred…

It’s all to be expected.

And our Father, when He formed the foundations of the world, He did expect it.

“Then why won’t He do anything about it?”, we cry.

You mean like, wiping out the entire human race?

“Oh…no…just the bad people.”

Sounds ok.  Except for this:

“They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt; There is no one who does good, not even one.” – Psalm 14:3

Not even one.  Not even me, not even you, not even the nicest person we’ve met.  Not one of us gets the label that reads: “good person”.

It is into this world…the one FULL of desperately sick, deceitful hearts that hurt and break and kill and destroy… that Jesus came.

“The people who were sitting in darkness saw a great light, and those who were sitting in the land and shadow of death, upon them a light dawned” – Isaiah 9:2 and Matthew 4:16.  (Because He told us He’d do it, and He did.)

“...although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.” – Philippians 2:6-7

Jesus left behind the glory of heaven, emptied Himself of His rights and comforts and power as God, and came here.  To be carried around and cared for by first-time parents.  To have fevers and the stomach flu and pain.  To weep beside graves and hold shattered friends.  To be overlooked, betrayed, misunderstood, plotted against, falsely accused.

To be killed.  To die a criminal’s death.  To die our death.

As I write this here in a little coffee shop, the Beatles’ “Let It Be” plays softly. “Let it Be”… the song of the helpless. What else can we do but let it be?  We’re powerless to change anything about our own black hearts, let alone others’.

But God.  He could’ve let it be.  He could’ve turned His back on this world full of people who turned their backs on Him.  He could’ve let us be and let us destroy ourselves for eternity.  It’s what we’ve earned, after all, with our demands that we have it all our own way.

He didn’t.  He did something. “There will be an answer”.  There IS One. 

The question each person has to face is the same one I face when I drop my boys off at school.  It’s the same one we face when we’re tempted to worry instead of pray; when we’ve got to do something obedient and difficult; when we’re tempted to take control instead of follow Him into the unknown:

Can He be trusted?

If God has led us to raise our kids within the public school system, can He be trusted with the outcome of our following Him there? 

Can He be trusted in your situation?

If He existed as the almighty watchmaker who wound up the universe and then sat back to watch as it unwound, I’d say, “No.”

If He existed as the divine puppet-master who controls world events and people’s lives for his own entertainment, I’d say, “No”.

If He existed as a bigger, more powerful version of humans, with all manner of weakness and volatility, I’d say, “No”.

If there were no evidence that He existed in the first place, I’d say, “No.”

But there is Christmas.

There are actually thousands of reasons to believe that this God is who He says He is…and completely opposite of all I’ve just described; but let’s just look at this one act of His for a moment.

God, who owns everything and needs nothing, created us to enjoy relationship with Him.  He gave us the freedom to choose to reject Him.  We ran away and said we wanted anything but Him.  He provided a planet filled with food and oxygen and oceans and sunsets for us to live in and enjoy with Him. We said He was unnecessary, and congratulated ourselves for being self-sufficient.  He told us the truth…that without Him, we’d destroy ourselves…and His heart broke at the thought of His little ones being destroyed.  We plugged our ears and said we’d rather listen to pretty-sounding lies.

We destroyed ourselves.

And we took the beautiful world He made and spilled blood all over it with our hard hearts that would have none of His love.

He could have set this planet ablaze and been done with it.  He’d have been completely justified in doing it, too.  After all, don’t you and I get rid of things we’ve made when they become ruined?  When they don’t serve the purpose we meant them for?

Instead, He came to get us.

He entered into this world that has brought about its own suffering.  He did not stay above the suffering, where He rightfully belonged, but entered into it with us.  And then, He drank down the totality of the suffering into His very own heart.  The suffering of sin (all that we weren’t meant for)…of hatred and illness and death…all that separates us from each other and from Him… He took it all.                         Because we’d earned separation from the Father, He was separated from His Father.  Because we deserved death, He died. 

And then, He rose.  In the greatest victory the world has ever known, He conquered all that previously had the power to destroy us.  The veil was torn, and we were invited in.

He came to get you.  To bring you with Him…to the place where peace reigns and joy is unending and tears never flow. 

Can you trust a God who would do such a thing?

Reader, when you look at the Christmas tree today, will you remember with me the God who hung on a tree in your place?  When you look at the lights all around, will you remember with me that He, who could’ve left us in the darkness of our making, came to dispel the darkness and get us back? 

If He was willing to love us like this…long before we were ever sorry for anything we’d done…long before we cared to have anything to do with Him, can He be trusted with our lives?  He has not guaranteed that we will be free of trouble if we follow Him.  But Jesus did say this:

“These things I have spoken to you so that in Me you may have peace.  In the world you will have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world” – John 16:33

Do you know what “these things” are that Jesus had spoken to them?  They were His death, resurrection, and the promise of the Holy Spirit.  They were instructions on praying in His name.  They were assurances of the Father’s presence with Jesus, and Jesus’ forever presence with them.

Jesus’ coming, celebrated at Christmas, means that even if our worst fears are realized, that is never the end.  Death and destruction and pain do not get the last word.  He conquered them all.   His death, His resurrection, and the presence of the Holy Spirit ensure that nothing in this life is ever the end.  He is making all things new.

You may be walking through your worst fears right now.  I may be walking through mine next month.  But neither of us is ever alone, because our God came to get us. Neither of us is ever without hope, because Jesus came to get us.  Christmas will be over soon, as will this life.  But when we go to the place where the celebration never ends?

“…He will swallow up death forever.  The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; He will remove His people’s disgrace from all the earth.  The Lord has spoken.  In that day they will say, “Surely this is our God; we trusted in Him, and He saved us.  This is the Lord, we trusted in Him, let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation” – Isaiah 25:8-9

May the anticipation of this be what fuels your Christmas...the brightest, boldest, sharpest contrast to the darkness of this world.  A truly audacious celebration.