Are You Afraid of Christmas?

It sounds like a silly question ... but lately I've been wondering if people are afraid of Christmas.

I started thinking about it yesterday when my wife, who is employed by a local school district, informed me that the principal at her school had issued an edict: "No one will play Christmas carols in the office!"

Yes, he was serious.

Apparently the edict came down from the school district head office. No Christmas carols! Not even a mention of the word "Christmas." This is a winter holiday. School districts and other public entities now live in fear of certain organizations might sue them for not being "politically correct."

She was telling me this as we were driving with my aunt, a 50-year veteran missionary from the Republic of Niger, recently retired, to a major local holiday lights display. Two miles of lights arranged in fantastic displays ... touching on almost every topic and theme you can imagine related to the winter holiday, from Christmas trees and poinsettia, to elves, lots of elves; to Santa shooting gifts out of a cannon, to aliens in flying saucers, to reindeer leaping over cars, to heavy construction equipment building gingerbread houses, and even tanks and military hardware (we live near a major military base).

Almost everything you can imagine ... except the most obvious! At the end of the display, my aunt asked, "So ... where's the manger?"

Miles of Christmas lights, but ... no manger. No Mary, no Joseph, no shepherds, no magi. No Christ child. Someone is apparently very afraid of Christmas!

This morning, again, I read the real account of Christmas in Luke 2. I am going to repeat portions of it here -- just because I can. (No, I'm not afraid!)

And there were shepherds living in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.

But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord."

The shepherds were terrified -- and no wonder. The most unusual thing they had ever encountered before, out there in the fields at night, had been the occasional sheep-hungry bear or lion. Scary enough. But an Angel of the Lord, lighting up the heavens? A heavenly host shining forth the glory of God and singing his praises? Probably not in the job description of the average shepherd.

Someone else was terrified, too. Herod, the puppet of Rome, was the ultimate representative of the Powers That Be in that region. The magi told Herod they were looking for the prophesied Messiah, the ruler of Israel, born that very day in his region. Herod too was terrified -- but for a different reason.

The shepherds turned their terror to joy once they realized the implications of the fact that the God of the Universe chose to announce his Good News first and foremost to them. A favorite Christmas carol recounts:

Shepherds, why this jubilee?
Why these songs of happy cheer?
What great brightness did you see?
What glad tiding did you hear?

Herod, on the other hand, turned his terror to hate. In an attempt to kill the Christ of Christmas, he had all baby boys 2 years or younger murdered by his henchmen.

In a nutshell, these are the two extremes of human response to the fact that God enters human history and is about to do something unimaginably big. Joy ... and hate.

I often find myself asking simple-minded "Why?" questions in response to what I read in Scripture. Here are three:

Why shepherds?

Shepherds occupied the lower echelon of their society. They were the poor, the dispossessed. Why would anyone listen to a shepherd?

But God loves shepherds, and He loves the poor. Shepherds protect sheep, and God loves sheep! King David was a shepherd. Jesus said, "I am the good shepherd."

God chose the lowest echelon of society to make his announcement that the King of the Universe had been born -- in an animal stable. Hmmm. His venue? The outskirts of a backwater town. He could have sent the angels to Herod's palace in Jerusalem. Or he could have woken up the entire town of Bethlehem. But he chose the outskirts. Why?

(By the way, did you ever wonder why the commotion in the sky above the shepherds -- which surely should have been visible and/or audible in Jerusalem proper -- didn't attract more attention in the town of Bethlehem? It's amazing to think that all those people simply slept through such a celestial event. But that seems to be the way it goes when God does something truly big -- most people just sleep right through it.)

Why fear?

It makes sense that the shepherds were afraid. But the angel said, "Do not fear." The poor have nothing to fear from God. The Savior was for them. His activity is in their favor. Their fear turned to rejoicing.

But the power structures of this world have much to fear. Because of his hatred, King Herod ended up in a spiral of self-destruction. Who mourned when he died? The world breathed a sigh of relief as Jesus, Mary and Joseph returned from their self-imposed exile in Egypt.

Why joy?

God is for the poor! He identifies with them. Jesus was born in a manger. The angels appeared to shepherds in the field. His Word to them was truly "Good news." It was unto them the Savior was born.

Jesus said he came to preach good news to the poor. The good news is: "Grace is the great leveler of the world's playing field. There's hope. There's forgiveness. There's freedom. I'm here for you!"

World Vision, as a ministry, exists to extend that message of "good news" to the poor. To be the hands and feet of Jesus, bringing hope, help, forgiveness, and freedom. We speak to power -- and they're not always happy about it. Those who would exploit the poor to strengthen their own position of power have much to fear from the Gospel. God is against them ... and He is for the poor!

We invite you to "join us in joy" this Christmas! Proclaim it from the rooftops. "God is for the poor!" Jesus, the Good Shepherd, came for us, the poor and broken! Hallelujah!

10 Years on the Web ... a Decade of Connecting to the Poor

Ten years ago this morning, I pressed a really scary big button. It was the button that made World Vision's United States Web site first go "live" on the World Wide Web at http://www.WorldVision.org/.

World Vision's first home page boasted 12 links and focused on the famine in North Korea. Today's homepage has 212 links and is a gateway to nearly everything World Vision has to offer.


As an editor with the world's largest and oldest Christian relief and development organization, I had been working with a team of folks for more than a year to turn our first Web site from dream to reality. A massive famine in North Korea was in full swing, and this added just the sense of urgency we needed to actually get online, ahead of schedule. Our very first Web site brought photos and stories about this crisis in a little-understood part of the world, to the living rooms of average Americans who cared and who responded compassionately. We were astounded by the response.

Ten years later, I am taking a few moments for a deep breath and a little reflection. The North Korea famine was just one in a string of crises, where we were able to turn to our Internet presence for rapid dissemination of critical information. In many large emergencies (such as Hurricane Mitch which devasted Latin America in November of 1998, or the Asian Tsunami of December 26, 2004) our Web site has been our first line of communication with the world. Frequently we have been able to go live with critical information within two or three hours of the time a large emergency strikes.

One of the really exciting things about our work here with the internet is how it has accelerated exponentially during the past three years. Three years ago I wrote a presentation, celebrating the fact that during our first seven years we had more than 6 million visits to our Web site. I just rechecked that number last night, and during the subsequent three years, through today, we've had an additional 12+ million visits. Our traffic has quadrupled.

And recently we celebrated a landmark: our 100,000th child sponsored online on our Web site! Nonetheless our current rate of online sponsorship exceeds 30,000 children each year. It's entirely possible we could hit 200,000 childen sponsored, late next year.

In recent years, I have actually seen many of our metrics actually double.

But even that's not the most exciting thing. The most exciting thing, to me, is the way God is using World Vision's internet presence for good in the world, to make a significant impact on the dire poverty and disease that is still the #1 problem besetting the planet. People like you and me who can actually do something about these problems, working together, are being mobilized by World Vision's internet presence at unprecedented rates. For instance, online "opt-in" subscriptions to our e-mail and internet news and resources have increased sixty-fold during the past six years!

To me, the internet has always been merely a tool to demonstrate the amazing work that compassionate people are doing throughout the world to reach out to children and their families who are impoverished and hurting. And not only that, it is a tool to actually connect people who care, with people who need care.

And, 10 years in, I feel like we are barely scratching the surface. The potential for the internet to revolutionize the way we go about achieving our mission is phenomenal, and so far largely untapped.

Practically every meeting I have attended during the past 10 years, we end up sitting around the table and dreaming: "Wow, wouldn't it be cool if we could do this ..." or "Imagine, if we could use the internet to ..."

I am grateful to God that many of those dreams have come true on our Web site during the past 10 years. Most have not ... yet. But, Lord willing, they will!