Always winter … but always Christmas and always Easter
Yet that message of sadness and pain is not the only word we have from God about our lives in this world. In reality, while our lives may feel like an endless winter, it is always Christmas for us, and always Easter. The meaning of Christmas was that God came into this world to share our pain, to take all our troubles onto himself. It was prophesied (Isaiah 7:14), “The Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel” [which means, “God with us”]. Christ entered into our existence and “took up our pain and bore our suffering. … The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:4,5). Christ faced all the worst that this world has to offer and died for us. But “it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him” (Acts 2:24). Every Easter, we celebrate his resurrection from the grave and the life eternal we have through him. And resurrection hope is not just something that prompts us to put on springtime clothing and go to church on Easter Sunday. God’s mercy “has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3) — a hope that enables us to get up and face each day in the here and now, as well as having assurance of being with God in the hereafter.
It may indeed always be winter in the way our lives feel on this earth. But in Christ, it is always Christmas, for he is beside us as our Brother, born into humanity with us. And in Christ, it is always Easter, filled with hope and new life. Because he lives, we also will live (John 14:19).