I attended a Lessons & Carols event last night at 10101 Robinson Church Road. Here’s what I heard…

The first humans (a guy named Adam and his wife Eve) heard God walking toward them and they hid from God because they were naked and afraid. And God said, “Why are you so insecure and ashamed of being naked?” God had made Adam and Eve to be childlike, which means they were completely secure in their nakedness (like how a toddler is completely okay with running around naked and feels no shame, and no insecurity). But now Adam and Eve feel all of this fear and shame because they filled their heads with a delusion; Adam and Eve had bought into the lie that they could become completely in charge of themselves, and they could dictate and determine their own identities and status and sense of worth; and they could be self-sufficient. Which (as it turns out) made them very afraid, and insecure, and defensive. So God told them that things would go hard for them until they died, and in the meantime they should believe that one day God would send a mysterious person to save them in a way that was implausible and mind-blowing (similar to the implausible and mind-boggling way John McClane saves his estranged wife Holly and her friends in Los Angeles at the Nakatomi Plaza from the cunningly villainous Hans Gruber and his band of German terrorists).

It turns out that this implausible and mind-blowing promise of salvation would involve the murder/sacrifice of God’s only, and eternally, begotten Son. And God really really really wanted us to feel the costly weight of this salvific plan/promise, so God told a guy named Abraham to take his strapping teenage son up on top of a mountain and slaughter him. Abraham was actually going to go through with this, and he got all the way to the top of a mountain and was in the very act of bring the knife down on his son’s throat when God said, “Hold up! Because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies!”

So Abraham’s son survived that mountaintop experience and his story became the epic known as “LAUGHTER!” (for his name was Isaac… יִצְחָק Yitzḥaq/Yitzhak – ‘laughter’ or ‘he laughs’). And this laughter would eclipse and supplant all the vexed, “victim”, defensive, offended, surly, sulky people on the planet! And the people who walked in darkness would see a great light; and those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them light will shine brighter than 7 days worth of the brightest sunshine!!

BECAUSE a CHILD will be born. And this child’s government shall be upon his shoulder, and this child’s name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. And the increase of this child’s government and of peace there will be no end. And this child will rule with justice and with righteousness forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

The plan/promise of God is like tree stump. And all-of-a-sudden a little shoot buds out of this stump. Life springs forth unexpectedly from what appears to be completely severed and dead! And the Spirit of the Lord rests upon this meek shoot budding from this stump; and this lowly shoot posses the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. And this modest shoot will actually become The King of the world/the King of kings and He will render good judgements for the poor and oppressed with, and He will decide with equity for the meek of the earth; and He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips He shall kill the wicked. And this child will dominate the world with His peace! Provocative peace, where the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra. And there shall be no harm or destruction in all the child’s holy mountain.