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No longer will you need the sun or moon to give you light, for the Lord your God will be your everlasting light, and he will be your glory. The sun will never set, the moon will not go down. For the Lord will be your everlasting light. You days of mourning will come to an end.
Isaiah 60:19-20, New Living Translation

These verses were some of the ones read during the Christmas Eve Candlelight service last night at First Baptist Church in Washington, North Carolina (my parents’ church). Also during a prayer the pastor thanked God for sending His son so that we may be forgiven of our sins and can have eternal life. This got me thinking, on a subject that I’ve put a lot of thought into lately. Is that the only reason that He came? Is our whole purpose for being saved to have eternal life? I can hardly think so. If that were the case then we can be ‘saved’, live life however we want, then get our ‘prize’ when we die. Why did he come? So that we can have relationship with Him – and through that – true relationship with each other.

I like the symbolism in the bible about light and darkness. Light is God – love, unconditional love, peace, hope and all that good stuff. Dark is sin – don’t stop at that though. Sin is not just ‘being bad’ or breaking commandments. The word sin comes from one of those old languages (you know, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, caveman or something) meaning without. Without God. Without light. Sin is nothing more than being apart from God, whether it’s something we do or just the fact that we haven’t entered into a relationship with God.

Ever since Adam did that fall of man thing we are all born in darkness. However, check this out – 1 John 1:5 says “God is light and there is no darkness in Him at all (NLT).” Since we are born in darkness we can’t have relationship with God because we are in darkness and in God there is no darkness. Well that sucks….

Jesus did give us the solution to that problem – John 1:4-5 – “Life itself was in Him, and this life gives light to everyone. The light shines through the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.” In these verses Him refers to Jesus Christ and the way that he gave life to everyone was by dying on the cross therefore paying for our sin. All we have to do is admit our state of darkness, accept the light, and enter into that relationship.

That’s totally awesome. The best gift I can ever get. Better than anything I could ever get any Christmas season. I have a relationship with the creator of the universe! I don’t have to worry about that whole sin thing (remember – He gave me the light, the darkness (sin) can never extinguish it). Oh yeah – He gave me eternal life too…

Merry Christmas everyone.