Before the invention of electric lights for Christmas trees, people would adorn them with real candles that would be lit throughout the season. Of course, trees, ornaments, and living rooms were occasionally set aflame.
This came to mind a few days ago while my family and I were putting our synthetic tree together and putting on ornaments.
Ornaments are semi-sacred territory for us, because our ornaments tell the tale of our lives.
The Santa-on-a-soccer-ball ornament draws me back to when I was playing soccer as a young kid; the dog-in-armour reminds me of the time when I was struggling through junior high school and Mom would pray the armour of God over me; the blue airplane ornament reminds me of the time I flew to a far away country to teach ESL; and so on.
I would be incredibly upset if all of these precious memory-laden ornaments were somehow lost, broken, or (Lord forbid!) consumed by fire.
But this year, while I was being visited by ghosts of Christmas past, I had a thought that drew my mind away from worry about fragility and towards my sure hope:
My Christmas tree is an image for my life in Christ: Just as I place my fragile but significant ornaments on these synthetic evergreen branches, how much more sure it is to place my fragile life in Christ’s everlasting arms.
For He has promised that when you and I entrust our lives to Him, we are held by His eternally; we are kept by the Son of God who became man for us, so that our lives might be found in Him forever.
Because our lives are bound to Christ’s we know that our fragile existence is bound for eternal life, as Irenaeus said long ago:
For by no other means could we have attained to incorruptibility and immortality, unless we had been united to incorruptibility and immortality. But how could we be joined to incorruptibility and immortality, unless, first, incorruptibility and immortality had become that which we also are, so that the corruptible might be swallowed up by incorruptibility, and the mortal by immortality, that we might receive the adoption of sons?
This is why Paul can say:
So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power (1 Corinthians 15:42-43).
Thanks be to God.