Special Devotion by VCS Spiritual Life Director DJ Jenkins 

Another calendar year is coming to an end, one that has come with many difficulties for the Greater Los Angeles area and our own Village Christian community. The January fires earlier this year left more than a few broken communities and families, and left every one of us longing for healing and safety in a world that brings us so much chaos.

We didn’t know in January how our planned theme of “God Is.” which seeks to answer our Essential Question of “Who is God?” might be used by God to help our need for healing and provide us One who is great enough to keep us safe in eternity. But God has a way of doing those types of things; showing up exactly when needed in exactly the way we need Him. It’s not always the way we would think He’d show up, or if He would consult us the way we would tell Him to come. As the Apostle Paul reminds us about who God is, “…who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? (Romans 11:34). The obvious answer to the rhetorical question is, “No one. God need never receive counsel from any man, woman, or child.” You cannot counsel One who knows all and sees all as it really is and holds the universe in His hands.

But He comes in the way we need in the timing we need. And that’s exactly what happened at Christmas. In the 1st century, when the people of God were under oppression from a foreign empire in the Romans, when they were being led by a corrupt and immoral leader in Herod, and when all seemed dark because God had been seemingly silent for over 400 years, He came. He came miraculously, not as an authoritarian empire and regime would come, with power and might and army. But He came as a baby, to a poor and helpless young couple, without even their own place to stay on the night of the Lord’s birth. The birth was not a human creation nor the result of our own ingenuity, but, “what has been conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 1:20b).

It was a work of God, not us.

But more than the worldly realities at the time, all people of the known world in the first century suffered from the same things we suffer from today. We are not merely under the oppression from human empires; we are under the oppression from a world of sin. We are not only often led by corrupt and immoral leaders, but, if we are honest, we see corruption and immorality in our own hearts. And if we only look at the world and we only look at our own hearts, it can seem that perhaps God is silent in our own time as well.

The good news of Christmas, however, is that God has not been silent. Indeed, He comes not to bring judgement, but to set us free from our world of sin. He comes, not to bring condemnation for our sins, but to bring forgiveness for our sins, if we’ll have Him. The angel pronounced to the Lord’s adoptive father, “you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21b). Perhaps the great wonder of Christmas is that God had every right to see our selfishness, corruption, and sin and come as One to bring condemnation.

And yet, He comes as the opposite. “He comes to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found.” Forgiveness, peace, and a new forever home for us all. Joy to the world, indeed.

So “Who is God?” this Christmas, Village Christian? God is with us…Immanuel. He is with us miraculously. And He is with us to save us from our sins. He is the One to bring us the everlasting healing we need, the final place of safety we long for. May we seek Him in our families, neighborhoods, and, yes, in our school community this coming year.

Merry Christmas, Village Christian.