In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
I suppose by this time that many of you will have seen the very old movie called It’s a Wonderful Life. You can find it at your favourite video store. It is a good story, but it is not especially Christian (especially that bit about angels getting wings when bells ring). That is really a bit too sentimental and too far out. Nevertheless, this film has a good point.
In case you do not know the story, here is a little outline. There is a man who is tempted to kill himself because suddenly his life is in a terrible condition. He had been sort of wishing that he had not been born. He had been thinking that his life was a complete failure and useless. He had gone into bankruptcy, etc. I will not tell you the whole story. An angel comes to him and shows him how different life would have been if he had not been born. If he had not lived, all sorts of terrible things would have happened. He was very much a catalyst for good things in other people’s lives. When people are tempted by the devil in this particular way, that is one of the things that they are blinded to : what life would be like without them. They forget, even though their lives are very painful, that the Lord is using them for good in many unexpected ways.
It is important for us to remember that particular detail today when we remember the ancestors of the Lord. We hear the genealogy of the Lord today going back to the beginning, fourteen generations times three. All these people that are listed in the genealogy are people who prepared the way for the coming of Christ. They are all people whose lives said “Yes” to the Lord. They were preparing for the Mother of God herself to say her ultimate “Yes”. Her “Yes” in life was not just “Yes” to the Incarnation, but “Yes” to the Saviour in everything in her life. If any of those persons had not been born, she would not have been prepared properly to become the Mother of God.
Now we are living after the fact, after the fact of the Incarnation. The same thing goes for us – for you and for me. Each of us the Lord creates uniquely. He loves us uniquely. As painful, difficult, and full of woe as sometimes our lives may be (sometimes to ourselves appearing useless), our lives are not useless. It is important that we go through all these difficulties in our lives with the eyes of our heart on the Saviour and with our confidence in Him.
I had a phone call early this morning when I was just waking up from some place in the east, from a family who are relatively new immigrants to the country, and who have had considerable difficulty. They arrived here as English-speakers, so it is not as though they had all sorts of linguistic difficulties one way or the other. Nevertheless, they were facing the difficulties that immigrants face. They were a whole family of people who had no permission to work. They had no money, and they were struggling and struggling. However, they were determined to keep their hearts on the Saviour, and to do what they had been taught to do – that is to trust Him, even though they just felt like giving up and running away. As a result of their faithfulness, their taking prosphora every morning, and their taking holy water every morning as believers can do, the doors finally opened. They are finally getting their passports and work permits. They simply wanted to call me this morning and give glory to God for the fact that this was finally happening. Despite all the difficulties they had in getting themselves settled in this country, the Lord has opened the doors for work to come. This family I knew in Europe quite a number of years ago. They have the potential to be very beneficial to our Church in this country. They have the gifts to be very good for our agriculture as well. I am looking forward to seeing what the Lord is going to do with this family.
The same thing goes for you and for me. We struggle. Yes, we do struggle, but the Lord is with us. However, without us, without our persevering and our struggling, other people would be falling down and getting lost. The Lord does not always show you and me who it is that is affected by our faithfulness, although sometimes we get a hint. What is important is not what use I am in the world. In the end, we are so materialistic in North America. The value of most things is limited to their usefulness. An ant is useful to a human being for what ? A hippopotamus is useful to a human being for what ? That is too often how we are assessing things. One person is useful to another human being for what ? What a degradation of God’s creation !
Our value is not in our utilitarian merit. Our use is in who we are : the fact that we exist in the first place. That we affect other people for good is all great, but the important thing is that God created you and me. He created us because He loves us. Who cares about the exact processes that doctors and scientists now understand and were taught in school. Human beings have been born and have been created like that for many thousands of years. What matters is that everything is because of God’s love. What is important about creation is what is its unseen foundation.
The source of everything is the fact that God loves His creatures. He loves you and He loves me uniquely, and He loves us all together as His children. Our value rests in this love that produces us and this love that sustains us. This love, this communion between us and Him is the meaning and purpose of all our life and all our interpersonal relationships. Yes, it is good that there are very many unseen, unknown, positive effects from the struggle and the life of each of us. In the end, it is still most important that God loves us. We love Him, and we are living in that love.
Let us respond to the demonstration of God’s love for us, His intimate care for us that is shown in this genealogy : the tender, unique, personal care He gives to each of us. Let us give thanks to the Lord for that. Living in the context of that, let us live our lives glorifying our Saviour, Jesus Christ, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.