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FROM AN ICY TREE TO A CHRISTMAS TREE!
 During the night there had been a terrible ice storm. The bush outside my bedroom window had frozen solid. Each leaf and stem was covered with ice.
It looked so beautiful, and yet so cold. Their icy cocoons looked like partially formed fingers – fetus fingers.
I reflected how hard the cold winds and rain must have beaten them. Now each leaf is encased, isolated. True it’s beautiful, but it’s a beauty that’s false, dead and destructive.
Every limb is bowed over with a heaviness their delicacy was never meant to carry.
“This is what life has done to so many of us,” I pondered. The cold winds of rejection, buffeted by abuse, covered by the tears of pain and disappointment have left our hearts encased in an ice shell. We’re untouchable, isolated, and numb. We are so bowed over, we cannot stand straight and are unable to truly live.
Only the warmth of the sun’s touch can bring freedom. Slowly the ice will melt and the branches will again be flexible. But now, they are in a confining showcase of ice.
I wondered if there were any areas of my life which needed thawing. “Precious Spirit, shine Your light on me. Melt the ice from my veins, my heart, and from my mind.”
The Lord quickly answered my prayer by reminding me of Psalm 117 (one of the familiar Passover Psalms)
Praise the Lord all you Gentiles, for His hesed (faithful love) is great towards us and endures forever!
I wrote in my journal, “Won’t that be a glorious day, when every knee bows and every tongue confesses that Jesus is Lord?!”
For years I’d taught that the Gentiles could trust God’s faithful love because He was faithful to the Jewish people. But that’s not what the Psalm says. God’s faithful love to the nations (Gentiles) was the subject of many of my sermons; but now He was showing me that I really didn’t believe it.
The Psalmist says the Gentiles are to praise the Lord for, [because, on account of,] His faithful love. How could I have missed such a fundamental reality? God is faithful to the Gentiles because of who He is! He is God. He is love.
God’s love to the Gentiles is in no way dependent on His love for the Jewish people.
While the Jewish people do have a unique purpose in God’s plan of redemption (as men and women have distinct purposes), God’s hesed love and mercy is given just as freely and abundantly to the Gentiles as it is for the Jews.
Because He is God.
As the sun shone on the ice outside, the Spirit of God shone in my heart. His light revealed the depth of my sin – resentment of the Gentiles. I’d been proud and exclusive. I felt that “they” had usurped “my” God, “my” promises, “my” heritage and “my” culture.
A root of bitterness had encased my heart in an icy tomb which was just as destructive and heavy as the ice on the bushes. Only the warmth of the Son could melt my ice encased heart.
Immediately I saw how this anger had distorted my understanding of God’s character, tainted all of my relationships with my new Spiritual family and prevented me from finding a church where I could feel at home.
As I lay prostrate before the Lord confessing my sin, He spoke to my heart. “Ktnah, [Hebrew for “little”] the Jews gave to the Gentiles the gift of Christ, now you accept something from “their” culture.”
A Christmas tree?! There was no arguing, no reminding God of the pagan roots of what He was asking me to do.1 Hadn’t He recently shown me that often we are bound by our own “religious” cultures? What is worship to one is wordly to another.
While I continue to be conflicted about the celebration of Christmas, I must remember that the blood of Christ has made us one. We are one to share each other’s traditions as we worship our Beloved God and Savior.
I got up from the floor feeling 50 pounds lighter. I was ready to enter into the joy of the season to bring glory to God and to embrace with love the complete Body of Christ.
By the next day the ice had melted from the bushes. Like them I now stood tall and free to live and to love.
O dear one, I cannot describe the sense of freedom, peace and sheer joy God has brought through this healing.
Living in Israel, I deliberately use “the tree” as a testimony of the wonder of His cleansing and sacrificial love in Jesus our Messiah.
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1Although praising God for the miracle and mystery of the Incarnation of God, Jesus never asked us to celebrate or even observe His birth. It was His death and Resurrection which God ordained first in Leviticus 23 (Passover and First Fruits). In fact, from the details in the Gospel accounts, it is certain that the actual birth of Jesus occurred in the Fall.
So what are the origins of the celebration we call Christmas? Sadly they come from pagan cultures beginning with the sun worshippers during the time of Nimrod. Eventually all over the world, 25 December was observed as the birthday the “sun god”, Tamuz, born of Semiramis (queen of heaven) and Nimrod. Followers of Tamuz spent the 25th in revelry, following the example of their “god” loved women, strong drink, dirty jokes and every sort of sensual pleasure.
The first century Christians shunned the December festival, but by the fifth century it was accepted by the Roman Catholic Church, but later condemned by the Puritans and abolished from England in 1644. Even America in 1650 required punishment for those celebrating Christmas.
Many of the traditions of today’s Christmas, including “the tree” are also of pagan roots. The prohibition of Jeremiah 10:2-4,8 can certainly be applied to “the tree”. According to Charles Huff, decorating the evergreen “began with the heathen Greeks and their worship of Adonia. Adonia was allegedly was brought back to life by the serpent Aessulapius after having been slain.
May you too experience the warmth of God’s healing touch as He melts whatever ice is in your heart, beginning today!
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