From the Headmaster’s Desk: The Hope of Christmas
By: Jim McKenzie
TRS Families & Friends,
On Christmas Eve each year, Hannah and I try to get the kids to bed at a decent hour because we usually have left all of our gift wrapping until the last minute. But getting our kids to bed on Christmas Eve is no easy task. They are simply too excited about Christmas Day to close their eyes and fall asleep. For each of them, there is a sense of expectancy and hope about Christmas morning. What did Mommy & Daddy buy me? Will I get that thing I really wanted? The excitement is all too much. The waiting is oh so hard.
And this is how we should approach the season of Advent. The weeks leading up to Christmas are a time of waiting, for all of us. It is how we participate in the story of God’s people. Like all those who waited for the Messiah, we wait. We wait and we hope.
Author Phil Reinders writes, “Advent is a season of expectant waiting, tapping into the sense that all is not well, the longing for the world to be made right again. It’s a season for restless hearts and people weary of a broken world who want, with all our being, to know there’s more than this.”
I long for this broken world to be made right again.
2020 has been a hard year. It was a year of a global pandemic, political upheaval, racial injustice, economic losses, and large-scale natural disasters.
Yet the time of Jesus’ birth didn’t look all that different either. In that year, God’s people found themselves being oppressed by Roman rule, occupied by a military force, facing unfair taxation and harsh economic conditions, and being led by corrupt religious leaders who pandered to those in power rather than shepherding the people.
And still they waited. Waited and hoped.
For what is the hope of Christmas? Our Savior come.
Our hope is not that 2020 will soon end (though thankfully it will). My hope is not in turning the page of a calendar or ushering in a new year. My hope is that our savior come.
“The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined.” –Isaiah 9:2
And so we wait. Like a child on Christmas Eve, let us do so with expectancy and hope.
For our savior come.
From all of us at The Rock School, Merry Christmas to you and yours!
Jim McKenzie, Headmaster
