Restoring wonder

Josh Salinas opens with his family’s Christmas traditions: opening presents at midnight on Christmas Eve, an annual hour-long Nerf gun battle on Christmas Day, and then gathering in the kitchen to sing happy birthday to Jesus over a cake. He admits that the wonder of the season has changed as he has grown older, and senses the Lord wants to restore wonder in the incarnation story for His bride, so that Christmas is not merely a repetition of presents and food but a remembering that God became man.

In the beginning was the Word

Reading John 1:1–3, Josh explains that the Greek logos also carries the sense of logic and reason, so Jesus is both the Word and the reason of God. Colossians 1 and Hebrews 11:3 show that all things were created through Him and hold together in Him. When God said “Let there be light,” Jesus was the instrument of that speech. The incarnation was not the inception of Jesus, and the nativity is not God tagging in a new wrestler; Jesus always existed, and God did not change when Jesus took on flesh. Quoting Karl Barth, Josh says eternity itself bears the name Jesus Christ, and the church fathers saw the incarnation and the cross as the heartbeat of all creation.

A child born, a government on His shoulders

Josh reflects on Elan’s Advent series through the Messianic prophecies, especially Isaiah 9:6, which Isaiah waited seven hundred years to see fulfilled. The verse is already a paradox: a child born who is called Everlasting Father and Wonderful Counselor. Echoing Pastor Max’s point from the previous Sunday, he asks why a fabricated story would place the Son of God in a feeding trough among shepherds in a town called House of Bread rather than among kings. The government on His shoulders is not political or about fame; it is a wooden beam. His government is cruciform, and even His birth prophesies His death.

What Mary felt

Turning to Luke 1:30, Josh quotes the church father Theophanes, who said Gabriel should stand in awe of Mary rather than Mary of Gabriel, because she now carried the eternal Son of God. He wonders what Mary felt lying in bed that night before any physical change, and suggests that those who have given their lives to Jesus know that feeling, the night when all you can do is praise God for hope and restoration. We too are carriers of the presence of God.

A bucket of honey called hope

While preparing, Josh sensed a vision of putting his hands into a tub of honey and going about his day, getting honey on everything he touched. The Holy Spirit told him the bucket was called hope. Believers should leave the mark of hope on everything and everyone they touch, including friends battling sickness or financial struggle, because we believe in an incarnate God who came for us. Luke 2:7 records the day hope was born: God made a child in a manger among farm animals, yet the hope of the world.

Confident hope and Maranatha

Christian hope is not the world’s wishful “I hope that works out.” It is confident, attached to the vehicle of faith through the coming, living, dying, and rising of Jesus. Josh recalls April 29, 2023, when he proposed to his wife on the Center Stage platform before fifty friends and family. When asked what he would have done if she said no, he says he never considered it, because he had enough relationship to be confident. He argues the church’s posture after the incarnation and resurrection should be a bended knee saying Maranatha, the word Paul uses to close 1 Corinthians, meaning both our Lord has come and Lord Jesus come.

He will finish what He started

Josh observes that the church has drawn back from bending its knee out of fear of rejection and fear that God might not show up. The Son who became man reveals our good Father, and we can trust God to finish the work He has begun in us. He invites everyone to sit in confident hope that God came, born in the House of Bread as food for all who come to Him, and closes with Psalm 33: the war horse is a false hope, but the eye of the Lord is on those who hope in His steadfast love.