There are all sorts of promises involving Christmas. This’ll be my obligatory Christmas blog, because I think I’ll take next week off. Or maybe recycle something.

Anyway. As Christians, we are so indeed fortunate to be able to celebrate the coolest holiday ever. I was eating lunch at a local restaurant yesterday, and the building sound system was playing Christmas music. I was struck at the blend of the secular and the sacred – it’s probably the only time of the year when overtly Christian music is played in public.

The promises of God all began in that manger. This is crazy, when you think about it. God wrapping Himself in flesh and coming to earth.

There is some amazing grace in play here, because this was the beginning of Jesus’ walk on earth, which of course culminated in His crucifixion and resurrection. In a season when we think about gifts, this is a big one. THE big one, actually.

Involved in this gift are some real promises. Here ya go:

God never made a promise He would ever break.

You can go all the way back to Genesis. Adam and Eve sinned, big time. On the backside of their sin – which impacts us to this day – He also promised that a Savior was coming. That theme and that reality tracked through the generations up until Jesus’ birth. All those Old Testament patriarchs knew of it. That promise held true. Jesus showed up. Hello, Savior!

God had a plan to go with His promise.

I often think about God creating Adam and Eve with the foreknowledge that they were going to sin. It didn’t have to be that way, I suppose, but God knew it (and did He will it? There’s some fun theological debate for you. I won’t go there.)

It wasn’t as if Adam and Eve sinned and God said, “Well, how am I gonna handle this?” No, even before creation, God knew that mankind would need a Savior. That plan was in place before creation. How about that.

God stayed faithful to His promise even when things were awful.

Stay with me here, because there’s a contemporary promise involved here for sure.

There was this worldwide flood, right? And except for a handful of folks on a really big boat, mankind didn’t go extinct. Read that again – humans facing extinction. But Noah and his crew were preserved. Know why? It’s in part because the promise of a Savior was in Noah’s genes, so to speak. This was just one family that knew this and believed.

Those promises held true. It wasn’t long after the Flood that Noah’s descendents thought they’d bail on God, what with idol worship and such. God had to start over with His chosen folks with Abraham. Jesus was going to be one of Abraham’s descendents, and that family line was preserved through some really dark periods of human history – 400 years of slavery in Egypt, 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, all sorts of wars and exile in Babylon.

Are things awful today? Are God’s promises still sound?

You bet they are. He didn’t bring us this far to abandon us.

No matter how much time passed, God hasn’t reneged on His promises.

If God went back on any of His promises, He would be unfaithful to His very nature. That won’t happen. It can’t happen.

Even when His people are unfaithful, God remains faithful to His word.

The whole history of Israel is one of coming close and falling away. They were forever turning their backs on Him. Invariably they paid the price of their unfaithfulness. Because of God’s promises, though, He would always call them back and welcome them. It’s a real shame – lather, rinse, repeat. It didn’t have to be that way. In our own lives, too, we can fall away, only to have circumstances turn us back to Jesus. I’m not sure where I got this quote, but someone said “You can take a thousand steps away from Jesus but it only takes one step to come back.” I like that.

God put together the march of history to assure every one of His promises have been kept.

There’s a great study to be had here. Scripture speaks of Jesus coming in the fullness of time – in other words, He showed up just when He was supposed to.  As an example, He was supposed to be born in the City of David. In order for that to happen, Caesar Augustus had to take a census, sending Mary and Joseph to their ancestral home. Cool, huh? And when it came time for our spiritual forefathers to spread the gospel, the Romans had the most far-reaching and sophisticated road system the world had ever seen.

So what does this mean? Does He fulfill His promises to us?

Yeah, because God is faithful. Every single promise made to us in scripture regarding us, our families, and our futures will come to pass because He is God. Even when we screw up, even when we face awful days, even when it seems that no one understands us, He will accomplish what He said He would in our lives.

It’s appropriate to pray, in light of what I’ve shared, for rest, security, and peace from Him. There are some amazing promises in scripture. We need to acknowledge them as the promises they are and relish the security they give.

O be joyful.

Talk later.

My grandmother had a phrase she used from time to time as she aged. She would speak of “the approaching Shade.”

There’s a certain poetry to that. The imagery of a sweet darkness enveloping us as we move from this world to the next is compelling.

I never got the sense that Mama Wilson wanted to pass. (Another old term is to be “translated.” Again, that sounds so much more elegiac than just “dying.”) It was just a matter of being ready.

Death is certain, unless Jesus returns first. Talking about death is sort of taboo. We tend to look on it as an intrusion, when in fact it is the reasonable and expected end of living.

Today’s blog is not a meditation on death. But I did want to use that reality as a backdrop to what I’d like to share.

”The approaching Shade.” How about this as a companion image … sunset.

Now we’re talking. Who of us has not been moved by the glory of the setting sun? When the sky is turned into a riot of color – oranges, yellows, reds … transitioning into powder golds and even purples. Lovely.

Sunsets occur with regularity. It’s a signal that now the day is over. And that’s proper and good.

But can sunset be a verb? Can “sunsetting” be an action taken rather than just a phenomena to be observed?

I think so.

Here’s what I mean. There have been plenty of times in my life when a season was over (yeah, I’m mixing metaphors. Stick with me.) When I graduated in 12th grade, I “sunsetted” my high school years. When Teresa and I got married, I “sunsetted” my single life. When I resigned from a church to move to a new place of service, I “sunsetted” my ministry.

So. Is there anything you need to sunset? Is there something in your life that needs to die? 

That might sound pleasant or unpleasant, depending on where you are and what this would mean to you individually.

Here’s where I’m coming from personally. This will be my annoying autobiographical pause, and then we’ll move on:

• I have ministered to teenagers vocationally for 40 years. This time span includes full-time church staff work, as well as part-time and interim. This also includes a stint with a parachurch ministry. This is nuts.
• This was/is a calling. I have never doubted for a nanosecond that work with students was what God intended for me to do. That was determined before I was even born. There is great security in that.
• At the same time, I know that God’s call is not static. If it pleases Him and brings honor to Him, He can move us in and out of places, engineer circumstances, and bring (and remove) people from our lives.
• Now, in these days, I have come to realize – based on prayer, scripture, circumstances, and the counsel of others – that my vocational work with students is over. In other words, I am “sunsetting” that aspect of my life and call, and I do that knowing God is at work clearly and definitively. Part of this has to do with my brain injury from last year. While I’m not incapacitated by a long shot, and I think some days that I’m showing some gradual improvement, I have to realistically acknowledge what I can do with excellence and be aware that some things don’t come as easily as they once did. Youth ministry is a challenge even on good days, and on those tougher days – holy cow. It can be utterly draining. Rewarding, for sure, but dang hard – physically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, relationally, every way. (I’d be happy to serve you some cheese with that whine.)
• Since I’ve made that public, people have been gracious. I’m grateful. But that doesn’t mean that I need to be treated like an invalid. I got lots and lots of good stuff left in me.
• The white-knuckled excitement I’m feeling in these days has to do with knowing God is still at work, giving me new opportunities of ministry that He’s custom-designed for me in these sunset days. How cool is that?
• I still get to volunteer with youth. I’ll do that as long as there is breath in me. Some of my former students can come to the nursing home and feed me oatmeal.

Thus endeth the autobiographical pause.

So why did I share that? Simply because it might be true of you.

Back to my question. Is there anything in your life that needs sunsetting?

• Are you in a life stage in which you realize that some things that were once important to you are no longer as urgent? It may be that what have become trivial issues simply need to be set aside so you can focus on what’s really important.
• Do you have a vague sense of dissatisfaction with your life in general? Would it be beneficial for you to sit down with paper and pen and actually write out what’s bothering you? The act of getting thoughts out of your head and into tangible form on paper can be oh-so-helpful. I’m all about journaling. Based on what you discover, you may find that you have thoughts and feelings that need to be sunsetted.
• Is there someone in your life – a relationship – that needs to be sunsetted? Let’s be careful here. I’m not talking about just randomly slamming the door on someone just because you’re unhappy with them or something they’ve done. Redemption and forgiveness should be your default position. But – and I’ll be candid and tell you it’s taken me years to understand this – not loving someone is unacceptable and unchristlike. I do think it is perfectly proper, though, to separate yourself from someone who devalues your soul. Everyone in your life is there because God put them there; and in the same fashion, He can remove them. You are commanded to love everyone unconditionally. But sometimes you have to simply love the memory of them, perhaps yearn quietly for what once was, and move on. This is hard – I wish I could help you more with this one.
• Are there desires you need to sunset? I’ve historically had problems with my “wanter.” I like stuff. I like to have things. There have been times, though, when I let my desire for stuff override common sense. I’ll bet that, even now, you have everything you need and plenty of things you want. Can you be satisfied with that?
• Here’s a scary one. Do you need to sunset a cherished belief? I don’t mean abandoning your faith or anything as radical as that. But it may just be that you are more open than you once were to opposing viewpoints. This all has to do with having a teachable spirit. I have yet to meet anyone that I couldn’t learn something from – if nothing else, just having confirmed that what I believed was right in the first place. Still, you can learn an awful lot from those who don’t see the world the same way you do. Who knows? You may be wrong. Wouldn’t you like to know if you’re wrong so you can sunset your mistaken opinion? I think it’s so wonderful to be taught something by someone not even close to your own age, your gender, your upbringing, or your worldview.

I think you understand what I’m saying. Sunsets, by nature, are quiet, transitional events. It’s not like flipping a cosmic switch. It’s a slow fade, a gentle move from light to darkness, and … it’s beautiful.

This is about you taking a sincere look at yourself, being circumspect, and doing some earnest self-examination. Most people are afraid to do that.

I’d encourage it. We are all works in progress. Sometimes there are things in life that need to be led into the darkness. That shouldn’t be scary. If it makes you into something positive that you weren’t beforehand, this is a good thing.

It’s a natural progression, just like so much in creation. The light fades. The night descends. While it is night, it is natural to fear the dark.

Yet there is the promise, the guarantee of dawn. A new day comes filled with new possibilities and opportunities. Embrace that.

Don’t fight the sunset. It will come whether you like it or not. Fortunately (and here’s where the analogy breaks down), we do have some authority as to the timing and reality of some sunsets. Choose those wisely. Sunset what needs to be moved on from. It will go well with your soul. Quoting that great theologian, Scarlett O’Hara, “Tomorrow is another day.”