Advent reflections - december 1

During this season of Advent, we will be reposting a series of reflection which Peter wrote a couple of years ago... may they encourage your hearts and stir your affections for our Savior. May your Christmas season be full of joy... because there's a reason to celebrate!

day 1: The curse that anticipated Christmas

The LORD God said to the serpent, "...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."  
Genesis 3:14-15

The celebration of the Christmas season seems to begin earlier and earlier each year. The Thanksgiving holiday has in some ways been swallowed up in busyness and preparation of Christmas. The stores are filled with tinsel and toys. Christmas music begins to play across radio stations and throughout the shops. Our culture is so enamored with the colors, carols, and commercials that accompany the “Christmas Craze” that the anticipation can’t seem to begin soon enough.

The anticipation of Christmas didn’t start with commercials. It didn’t start with carols. It didn’t even start with the birth of Christ. The anticipation started long before the virgin Mary conceived. The anticipation of Christmas started in the Garden of Eden. It started with a curse.

In the aftermath of Adam and Eve’s disobedience—listening to the deception of Satan over the instruction of God—the Lord God pronounced the penalty of their destructive choices. One by one, God delivered the bad news to the serpent, the woman, and the man. It is here that the Lord God sentences the serpent to a curse—a curse that announced a battle between Satan and mankind, a battle in which a descendent of the woman would one day defeat Satan with a fatal strike to the head. It is a curse that anticipates a son who could undo the destruction of sin. It is a curse that anticipates Christmas.

These words came to Satan as a curse, but to us they come as a promise. It a promise that God would send a Son who would deliver a fatal strike to Satan, a son who would redeem us from the destruction of sin. This curse is the promise of Christ. This promise is why we anticipate the celebration of Christmas. So this Christmas, instead of getting caught up in the chaos and confusion of our culture’s celebration, it is my prayer that we will get caught up in the anticipation of a son, the promise of Christ, who came to renew what our sin had destroyed. That’s a reason to celebrate.