I don’t know about you, but as a kid, my entire year revolved around Christmas. I think I first began to understand the concept of time as it was related to Christmas.
Thanksgiving?
Close to Christmas.
Family vacation?
Far away from Christmas?
Birthday? Closer to Christmas.
You get the idea.
In a way, I never left that mindset. Christmas is the ultimate culmination (and the goal) of every year. Which means the years in which we get “all the things” done and see all the people make fantastic memories. But there are some years that just don’t… swing the way we had hoped they would. Those are the years of unmet expectations.
This really hit me last week, when my daughter and I had been exposed to a really nasty virus. And while we waited to see whether or not we caught it, I could only think of one thing:
We might have to quarantine on Christmas.
I think most families have Christmases in which they get sick. I remember one year when my mom and brothers had the stomach flu, and my dad and I had to go to Christmas Eve service without them. But this year hit harder because we’re probably going to be in another state next Christmas, and we have no idea when or if we’ll ever live in Vegas again. I can tell you that I spend lots of time asking God to make my heart right. Because I was really, really angry.
Angry that someone would expose a huge group of people just before Christmas to this horrible virus. Angry that our family may not get to spend Christmas with the rest of our loved ones. (As it was, I had to miss multiple family gatherings in the last few weeks because we were sick then, too.) Angry that we might not even get to do our usual family Christmas morning if some of us and the others weren’t.
I’ll fully admit now that I had to pray over and over again for God to change my heart. Because He owes me nothing but has given me everything, and I knew my attitude needed a serious check. But fighting sin and striving for joy with a broken heart is one of the hardest things I think humans can do.
By God’s grace, we’re healthy today, and I am SO grateful for that. But it really got me thinking about how hard those expected seasons of joy are when our hopes and expectations aren’t met. People get sick. People die. People move. Fights break out, and drama ensues, and sometimes we suffer for trouble that isn’t even ours.
Similarly, authors often use this idea of unmet expectations in our hero’s journeys we send our characters on. Character A wants a shiny thing. Character A has a plan to get said shiny thing. Character A’s hopes are dashed. Character A must go on a journey to try to get the shiny thing.
Whether it’s us in real life, hoping we’re not sick on Christmas, or whether it’s our favorite book characters hoping to get that promotion at the big city publishing firm or hoping to exchange a voice for a prince, we need to call to mind the real Christmas that took place in a way that no one expected.
The Christmas that our Savior, Jesus Christ, was born.
Of course, Israel was expecting a Savior. We see this throughout all of the Old Testament, the people crying out for the Savior God had promised back in Genesis 3:1:
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.
Daniel prophesied the Redeemer in Daniel 7:13:
“I saw in the night visions,
and behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
and was presented before him.
And, of course, we can’t forget Isaiah 9:6:
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
wand the government shall be xupon4 his shoulder,
and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Israel, after waiting for this Savior for thousands of years-many of them spent in captivity under bigger, stronger kingdoms-was waiting with bated breath. They were sure that God’s promised Savior was going to save Israel from Rome and any other enemies who wished to conquer them. Their king would ride in with glory, overpowering their captors and leading Israel to its eternity of security, victory, and peace.
But this was not what happened. These expectations weren’t met. At least… not in the way they had planned.
Their Savior came, just as God had promised them. But rather than riding in as a warrior, ready to defeat the Romans, the promised king came as the most vulnerable persons of all. He came as an infant. And rather than being born to a queen, the Christ’s mother was an impoverished teenager who had just been married to an impoverished carpenter. Instead of being born in a palace, where the royal heralds would shout in the streets of his birth, the long-promised Warrior King was born in a dirty stable, surrounded by animals, and his birth was celebrated by the dregs of society – shepherds, keeping watch over their flocks by night.
We see this confusion later, as Christ begins His ministry. The Pharisees (Jewish religious leaders) refused to acknowledge Jesus as anyone of import, no matter how many miracles they witnessed. And even though the people followed him in vast numbers, hoping to hear His teaching and eat His food, most of them abandoned Him when He told them that following Him would be hard. Even his own disciples, His chosen students and friends failed to understand His purpose until after His death and resurrection.
Because, by all appearances, Christ’s coming was full of unmet expectations. The Warrior King Israel had been hoping for was a poor carpenter who paid taxes to their captors and even dined with and befriended their betrayers (tax collectors) like Zacchaeus. He didn’t sweep in with an army, and during His time on earth, Israel continued in its captivity to Rome.
But what many of them couldn’t see is something we still miss today. Christ’s purpose wasn’t to defeat Rome or usher in a new reign for Israel. At least, not at that time. Instead, He states His purpose for coming in Luke 4:
And when it was day, he departed and went into a desolate place. And the people sought him and came to him, and would have kept him from leaving them, but he said to them, “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose.” And he was preaching in the synagogues of Judea.
Christ came to preach, to die, to rise again, all to save His people from their sins. He says so in His prayer in John 12:27, before He’s arrested and put to death on a cross:
“Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour.
Even with all of this in hindsight, however, we miss Christ’s purpose today, too. Because we think we can save ourselves from our sins. If you ask anyone if they’re going to Heaven after they die, they’ll often say they are. And if asked why they think they’ll go to Heaven, their answer will often be some variation of this:
“I’m a pretty good person. I’ve never killed anyone, and I do my best to be nice to people and do good things.”
The problem with this mindset is that our expectations of what is good and God’s standard of what is good don’t correlate. “Doing my best” will never be good enough. Because anything short of perfection is evil. Christ says so in Mark 10:18:
And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.
We have expectations today that we can do our best and get to Heaven on our own. But the Bible says that we are born dead in our sins and trespasses. And as I tell my kids, if you’re truly dead (and the Bible says we’re spiritually dead), the doctor can’t ask you permission to start your heart again. Or rather, he can ask, but you’re not going to answer.
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. – Ephesians 2:1-3.
If we had any hopes or expectations that we could save ourselves from our sin, this verse destroys every one of those hopes. For we all know deep inside of us that we can’t be perfect. We sin every day, every hour, every minute. Every unkind, selfish desire. Every mean word, whether uttered or thought. Every lustful desire we entertain. We have no hope of meeting our own expectations.
“But God…”
Oh, how I love those words. Let’s keep reading in Ephesians.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. – Ephesians 1:4-10
God doesn’t meet our expectations, just as He didn’t meet the expectations of the Israelites, two thousand years ago. Instead, He exceeds them. And He continues to exceed them with His mercy, grace, and lovingkindness. Israel’s old hopes of being freed from captors and attackers and living in peace under God’s reign will indeed be fulfilled, just the way they were promised in the Old Testament. But they will be far surpassed in the final days, after Christ returns to gather all of His saints to him to live with them in peace forever and ever. And not only His kingdom of Israel, but all of those who trust in Him for their righteousness alone.
It’s a hallmark of every Hero’s Journey story that the main character doesn’t get what he wants in the beginning of the story. Or rather, he often gets it at the end, but in a much bigger, much better way. The storyteller often supplies what the character needs instead of giving him what he wants, and he gives it to the character in a way that makes the character into who and what he is meant to be.
We all have hopes and dreams and aspirations in this life, and I’ll be the first one to say that not having those expectations and hopes met is heartbreaking. But just as the author of the latest fantasy book often uses those unmet character desires and expectations to change the character completely, God does the same with our stories. He takes those expectations and throws them away to give us something more.
And in case you’re wondering how or when, He’s already done it.
He did it when He gave us His Son.