Did your church hold a “Christmas Adam” service?

My wife and I attended a candlelight service on Christmas Eve. You may have done the same. Or your church may have offered something different: a “Christmas Adam” service the day before.

New York Times reporter Elizabeth Dias tells us that “some evangelically minded and social-media-savvy Protestant churches and families have embraced [this] celebration” on December 23. Why the name? “Because Adam came before Eve.” Dias explains that for many, holding a Christmas Adam event is “a practical way to compete in a crowded holiday season by offering church services a day before the holiday actually starts.”

Christmas Adam was just one of this week’s holidays:

• Hanukkah fell on the same day as Christmas for the first time since 2005, a convergence that occurs an average of five times a century.
• Kwanzaa begins today, a weeklong celebration of African American culture held annually from December 26 to January 1.
• There’s even “Chrismukkah” for interfaith families, combining elements of Christmas and Hanukkah such as a Christmas tree with Hanukkah ornaments.

Here we see America’s pluralism on full display, a vivid reminder of the popular assumption that “all roads lead up the same mountain,” so it doesn’t matter what you believe so long as you are tolerant of the beliefs of others. After all, the holidays will soon be over and life will return to “normal” for another year.

Until it doesn’t.

Three thoughts I had never thought before

At our church’s Christmas Eve service, we took the Lord’s Supper together. As we did so, I had three thoughts that were new to me in my decades of leading and sharing such services.

First, when we ate the bread and drank the juice (Baptists don’t use wine, for reasons I won’t try to explain today), they entered our bodies and changed us physically. Others could not see what was happening inside us, but this made the opaque process no less real.

Second, most of us who took the bread and juice did not understand and could not explain this physical process. But this fact made its reality no less real for us.

Third, we took the elements by faith. If the bread or juice had been contaminated, we wouldn’t have known until it was too late. We trusted those we did not see to prepare what we could see.

So it is with our salvation in Christ: As I noted yesterday, when we ask him to forgive our sins and become our Savior and Lord, he enters our lives in a way that changes us forever (John 1:12; Colossians 1:27). The fact that this internal experience is not physically apparent to others makes it no less genuine or transformational. Our finite, fallen minds cannot understand fully our Lord’s saving work, so we receive his grace by faith.

In these and many other ways, “we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). But there will come a day when what we believe but cannot prove will be proven beyond all doubt.

“Christian, believe this, and think about it”

The philosopher John Hick told a parable about two men traveling together down a road. One believes that he is moving toward the Celestial City, while the other is equally convinced that the road leads nowhere of consequence. They climb the same hills, descend into the same valleys, and experience the same periods of sunshine and rain. All the while, one is certain that they are journeying toward eternity, while the other is equally certain that they are not.

When they come to the last bend in the road, one will be right and one will be wrong.

On that day, all that we believe to have happened uniquely at Christmas and uniquely because of Christmas will come true for us in ways that none can doubt. The English Puritan Richard Baxter (1615–91) said it well:

Christian, believe this, and think about it: you will be eternally embraced in the arms of the love which was from everlasting, and will extend to everlasting—the love which brought the Son of God’s love from heaven to earth, from earth to the cross, from the cross to the grave, from the grave to glory—that love which was weary, hungry, tempted, scorned, scourged, buffeted, spat upon, crucified, pierced—which fasted, prayed, taught, healed, wept, sweated, bled, died. That love will eternally embrace you.

He therefore asked, “Is it a small thing in your eyes to be loved by God—to be the son, the spouse, the love, the delight of the King of glory?”

“I feel the bottom and it is good”

On Christmas Day in 1776, George Washington and thousands of his troops crossed the half-frozen Delaware River and won a victory that raised the spirits of the American colonists on their way to independence and a new life in their New World.

Now consider another river we will all cross one day into our own New World. In Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan tells us that Christian and Hopeful came to the river of death. They asked about the depth of the water and were told, “You shall find it deeper or shallower, as you believe in the King of the place.”

When Christian entered the water, he began to sink and cried to his companion that the billows and waves were going over his head. To this Hopeful responded, “Be of good cheer, my Brother, I feel the bottom and it is good.”

Christian soon found solid ground on which to stand, and “the rest of the River was but shallow.”

How fully will you “believe in the King of the place” today?

Thursday news to know:

• Bald eagle officially US national bird after Biden signs bill into law
• Biden pledges more US arms to Ukraine after Russia’s Christmas attack
• Dozens dead in airliner crash “likely” caused by Russian air defenses
• Smishing: US postal officials warn about new texting scam
• On this day in 1776: George Washington wins first major US victory at Trenton

*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.

Quote for the day:

“Many things about our salvation are beyond our comprehension, but not beyond our trust.” —A. W. Tozer