Christmas Day
Hebrews 1:1-4 (5-12)
“Before and After”
by CM
Have you ever known a person who was stuck in the past? Everything they say is about, “The good old days.” People constantly caught up in nostalgia, pining for the comforts of yesterday, confusing “old-school” with “old-fashioned.” Just because an old pair of shoes is still comfortable doesn’t mean that they aren’t worn out and as with all things, change is inevitable.
Our text is written fro the benefit of those who have become comfortable with what was. People who are devoted to God in the context of a past deliverance. We have come to love the Lord and have a “testimony” to the truth of what God can do. We remember our former state, our particular sin, and in that deliverance we KNOW God; for it was through that experience that God spoke to use… in times past, our Before.
Our text illuminates the validity of a “before” experience. God spoke in time past through the prophets, but in these last days, he speaks through his son Jesus—the “After.” Many in the first century and up to this very day have a problem with the change that Jesus brought into the world. They were, and are, stuck in the before, but the real question is this. Does a person’s choice to be suck in the past equate to God remaining there too?
As we celebrate the birth of Jesus and acknowledge God’s transition in his means of communication from the old to the new, let’s open ourselves up to experience God work in our life in a new way. Let’s open ourselves up to a new “After” and be thankful for God’s “Before.”
The opening words of Psalm 98 read, “O sing to the LORD a new song.” In Jesus we have cause to. In all that we testify to, all of it is “before.” Move with an open willingness into the glorious “after” of what God wants to deliver you not just from, but to.
Prison Lectionary 