Creation at Christmas
As Christmas approaches my town in the heart of midwestern America, it feels as if all of nature bends towards death. The trees have already dropped every one of their leaves to the ground. Their bare limbs brace for the snow that will soon rest on their arms. The lush green lawn that my kids ran through chasing fireflies has shrunk and yellowed as it prepares to receive the quilt of snow the clouds will tuck atop its surface. While carolers repeat songs about heaven and nature singing, I look around and wonder if the creation story has anything to do with the most wonderful time of the year.
Whether you live somewhere where a White Christmas is possible or if you celebrate Christmas in shorts and a t-shirt, the advent season is actually one of the best times to return to the most classic Sunday School lesson: the creation story. Yes, we can read about the Messianic prophecies in the Old Testament or rehearse the journey of pregnant Mary in Luke, but ultimately, Christmas is all about creation. And this is the story we would do well to remember this December and every day after.
Life out of Chaos
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). The phrase begins virtually every children’s picture Bible. Usually it’s a simple phrase of text suspended over a dark page. Though simple, the visual is no less true. The Bible tells us the earth was full of darkness. It was formless—a deep void of chaos.
This kind of darkness was central to many Ancient Near Eastern creation stories. It is from this chaos that mythic gods arose, fighting each other, sometimes consuming each other for power, while their slain bodies turned into the matter that would form land and people groups. Yet in the Bible’s creation story, Yahweh merely spoke. Into the chaos of darkness, his Word went out to create life. The apostle John opens his gospel with the reminder Christ himself was there in the beginning with God. In every single “Let there be,” Jesus himself was creating from nothing. The sun, the moon, plants, animals, man, and woman. “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3).
Of course, just as we are familiar with the creation story, we are equally familiar with the story that follows. Created humans sinned. Though they were formed from darkness, they chose to turn back towards it. Death touched every piece of mankind’s world—from the thorns in the ground, to the cells in their body, and the neurons in their brain. There was no inch that could hide from its grasp. The world was becoming undone as a darker chaos took over. Athanasius, a fourth-century Bishop who fought to protect the doctrine of Christ’s divinity, details this reality in his concise and beautiful work, On the Incarnation. He wrote that just as mankind had come out of non-existence, “so were they now on the way to returning, through corruption, to non-existence again” (On the Incarnation, 8).
Searching for a Solution
On this path humankind marched for generations. What once was brought into life and order and beauty, now turned back towards nothingness. The chaos increased so much, the Lord washed the world in a flood, save one family protected in an ark (Gen. 6). Yet relief didn’t come. Creation was provided with only a fresh world, not a clean humanity. Noah still headed toward chaos—exemplified in his own sin of drunkenness, which brought consequences for his family (Gen. 9:20–27).
God patiently waited through the years, until once again in a barren and chaotic wilderness near Mount Sinai, he ordered something new. In a land that was decidedly “un-Eden,” as writer Chad Bird puts it, the Lord created a new family—a new nation (Your God Is Too Glorious, 55).
Yet once again this new family headed back toward the grave. Though they had the God of Israel guiding and directing them, Scripture tells us they repeatedly turned away. They desired to run back to slavery in Egypt. They turned back to idol-worship. They turned back to trust in human kings. The books of Judges, Kings, Samuel, and Chronicles repeatedly show how the people created by God continued to run towards death. Despite all their efforts at keeping God’s law, his people and all of humanity continued to descend into chaos. While they reached for comfort, glory, and fulfillment, ultimately they ran towards non-existence.
Yet in his love, the Lord would not leave his people to their own devices. That the creatures who had “once shared the nature of the Word should perish” once again was a monstrous reality to Athanasius, and a reality the Lord himself would not allow (9). The Lord knew all along what his erring creation needed, and he would provide it. They didn’t need a fresh start or a check-list of rules. His creation needed a complete re-creation. We needed a re-creation. And where would we find it? Athanasius asked us, “What—or rather Who was it that was needed for such grace and such recall as we required? Who, save the Word of God Himself, Who also in the beginning had made all things out of nothing?” (9).
Nobody else could recreate us anew, except the one who spoke our being into existence in the beginning. The Christmas story is a creation story. Except this time, instead of hovering over the chaos and darkness of the void, the Creator stepped right into it. He clothed his immortal and incorruptible glory in the darkness of flesh. He walked into our world that was plummeting towards non-existence. Into our darkness, he brought light. And the Word once again breathed life into our nostrils. The first time he fashioned us out of dust. The second time, the Word fashioned us by his own blood and broken flesh.
Our Savior entered our darkness and chaos, “that He might turn again to incorruption men who had turned back to corruption, and make them alive through death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of His resurrection” (10). And this is very good.
Turning toward Existence
As saints who are completely justified and recreated by the Word, we still live in a world of darkness. We feel this chaos when we check the news. We see waves of disorder crashing as we scroll our social media feeds. We come face to face with the blackness in our own hearts as the Spirit convicts us of the sin that draws us in. Somehow the darkness still glitters in our eyes. It beckons us to enjoy it, to turn towards self, towards man-made approval, legalism, pride, jealousy, and strife. It whispers sweet nothings about our own abilities and how to manipulate our future. Yet as much as it promises, sin only draws us back into chaos. It ropes us towards non-existence.
But Christian, our Creator never stopped creating. Each day, the Spirit hovers over your darkness, and he breathes life into the chaos. Each moment you repent over your sins, the Word himself speaks light and forgiveness into the dark. He does this for you this Christmas, next January, and the following July. The Word continues to shine light into our darkness each and every day, redirecting us back to life and the existence we were made for. He will continue to do this until the day we are finally made whole and complete, free from the curse of sin (Rom. 8:30; 2 Cor. 3:18; Col. 3:4). Not only will we find freedom from sin, but the Lord will purge the sin and darkness from the entirety of creation (Rev. 21:1).
The manger in your nativity set points to the feedbox that once cradled your Creator. Because of his birth we can shout, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17). He came into our cold and dark world on that first Christmas, and he never stopped creating. No matter what kind of darkness you are facing today, the Word—your Creator, your Savior—speaks life, hope, and light into the midst of it. And that should cause all heaven and nature to sing.
Brianna Lambert is a wife and a mom to three, making their home in the cornfields of Indiana. She loves using writing to work out the truths God is teaching her each day. She is a staff writer with GCD and has contributed to various online publications, such as Christianity Today and The Gospel Coalition. You can find more of her writing paired with her husband’s photography at lookingtotheharvest.com.