The Fix Is In

Today I learned that one of my beloved ones received some disheartening news.  He is discouraged about it.  I wish that I could "fix things" for him in this situation.  It hurts my heart to see him suffer, even though some of it is of his own making.  Especially since that is the case...

When I was a child my daddy would sometimes get a "switch" (a small tree branch for you uninitiated out there) and give me "a switchin'".  I never wanted it, always deserved it (being quite the headstrong child) and still remember it, all these days later.  The sting of the switch was short-lived, but there is one thing about those occasions that lives on in my memory.  My daddy would almost always say, "This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you."

I never believed him then.  In fact, it made me mad, because I thought it a ridiculous statement!  But, as a parent now, I truly understand.  It hurt him to see me suffer, even in that small way.  It hurt his heart more than the sting of the hickory switch hurt my little, scrawny legs.

When Adam and Eve so horribly messed things up for all mankind in the Garden of Eden, don't you know it hurt God's heart terribly, even though He knew they were going to do it?  And, don't you know that He said to Himself, "One of these days I'm gonna fix that."  In fact, He proclaimed that He would, as early as Genesis 3:15.

Many, at Christmas, find the seasonal celebrations unbearable because they have been separated from loved ones.  Sometimes a loved one has died, for instance.  When man sinned, a horrible breach occurred between God and man.  The pain we feel when separated from a loved one is only a taste of the pain God felt when our sin destroyed the fellowship He had formerly enjoyed with mankind.  Oh how He must have grieved that loss...after all, our race was created for fellowship with Him.   And, we had so broken, so blemished that relationship.  Not even "a switchin' " could fix it.

When it was time for Jesus to be born, do you think God may have said something like, "Finally, the time is now right for the ultimate, total solution to be given!"  All those centuries between Eden and Bethlehem, God interacted with mankind in various ways, knowing that only one way could fully reconcile all mankind to Him.  Jesus' birth was the commencement, in our time-bound world, of that eternal plan.

I watched a good, but weird, movie today.  A friends of many decades and I get together every now and then for a meal.  Today, it was a movie and a meal.  Anyway, the movie was weird in that there were aliens (weirdness assured when aliens are involved).  Beyond that, though, there was an aspect of the movie in which Time was fluid.  Time was not the linear, orderly, irrevocable thing to which we are accustomed, to which we are bound in this earthly life.

God is not bound by Time.  For God - - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - - the "fix was in" before creation occurred.  Before Time was created, God had decided "I'm gonna fix that."  At Advent, we celebrate The Fix that came, as we anticipate each year the birth of our Savior, Christ, the Lord.  I'm so glad He came and made things right.

4But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, 5To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. 6And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

Galatians 4:4-6 KJV

Hallelujah!  The "fix" is in!