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聖誕暝燭光禮拜省思

 

經文:A Christmas Festival of Lessons and Carols 12-24-2011

Merry Christmas eve! What we have been waiting for all Advent season is finally here! I really enjoy the Christmas eve service, even more than Christmas day. I think today is more meaningful than tomorrow because today is exciting. Like New Years Eve, when we sit around waiting for the new year to come, we are sitting here, excited, by the prospect of what is to come.

That is, the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. When we read these lessons and sing these carols, we are remembering and celebrating even as we await the birth of Jesus. So today, we started in the Old Testament, when we know that God has promised us that something different, something new will take place; something that will change the way we live forever.

Recently, I was on a flight to Chicago, and on the flight I watched this terrible movie. It was called A Better Life. It is about an illegal Mexican immigrant who comes to LA and is trying to do his best to give him and his son a better life in the United States. I have to admit, I started watching this movie in the middle, but still, you could get the gist of the movie.

The man worked as a gardener and finally saved up enough money to buy himself a truck. However, as he drove himself to work, he decided to pick up another guy to help him out. This other guy decided to steal his truck and sell it. So the majority of this movie was about him trying to find the truck to get it back.

When he finally got the truck back, after about thirty minutes of movie time, the police pulled him over. Having no papers, he was arrested and detained. He had to decide whether he wanted to stay and try to convince the government to let him stay or if he will just be deported back to Mexico and try to sneak in again. He chooses to go back to Mexico. The last scene of the movie has him in a group of people, trying to get back into the United States.

I wanted to tell you about this movie because at the end of this movie, I thought: what’s the point? I just felt like this movie went nowhere. The end of the movie was basically this guy in the exact same place as he was in the beginning of the movie—trying really hard to get some traction in his life, but not really succeeding.

One of the things that I truly appreciate about Christianity is the forward motion of our faith, of our lives. God has everything planned for us. When we believe, we don’t have to stay in the same place and live the same lives over and over again—we can change and be changed by God.

So today let us remember God as God remembers us.