Randy has contributed the following article to the blog. I respect Randy Alcorn for his passionate focus on the Gospel. I am thankful for his courage to take unpopular yet biblical stands on important issues. I appreciate his writing. I think you’ll appreciate it, too. Here, he answers some questions he’s been asked about Christmas.
What is your fondest Christmas memory?
My mother’s smile. I vividly remember 40 years ago, sitting at a dining room table with my mother and brother, after a huge turkey dinner and opening presents on Christmas Eve. I remember playing Monopoly at the same table on which my little girls ate Christmas dinner twenty years later, in Nanci’s and my home (after my mom died). Though I didn’t grow up in a Christian home, I had the privilege of leading my mom to Christ after I came to the Lord in high school. Yet as I look back, my mother’s smile and decorations and gift-giving and meal-preparation were the heart and soul of Christmas in our home. I cannot think of Christmas without thinking of my mother’s smile—and I can’t wait to see that smile again.
What is your favorite part of waking up on Christmas morning?
As a child, it was the first waking realization that it was Christmas, which was the best day of the year, even in our nonchristian family. My first move was to jump up and look out my bedroom window to see if it had snowed last night. Usually not, but several memorable times it did. After the snow-check, my brother Lance and I would run to our stockings hung by mom in the living room. I would open the contents slowly, including the ever-present Whitman’s Samplers, stretching it out, not wanting it to end.
We got the big presents on Christmas eve, but there was a special joy in the little treasures wrapped up in the stockings. I didn’t understand then that these little gifts represented the greatest gift ever given—God’s Son. Now, as an adult, a father and a grandfather, I feel those same childlike feelings, a warmth and anticipation. But what I feel now on Christmas that I didn’t many years ago is anticipation for a New Earth, without sin and curse and suffering—a redeemed earth where I will live and work and play and worship and serve with Christian family and friends, and countless new friends besides.
I feel a spirit of adventure not just for the passing joys of Christmas, but for an eternal Christmas, a great story where—as C. S. Lewis put it at the end of the Chronicles of Narnia—every chapter will be better than the one before.
What is your favorite Christmas carol or secular Christmas song? Why?
When I was a kid I liked “Silent Night,” even though I didn’t understand the meaning. Now my favorite is “Joy to the World,” because as my wife pointed out to me years ago, it’s the Christmas song that looks forward to Christ’s return and the New Earth. “He rules the world with truth and grace.” That’s what my heart longs for. “No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground; he comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.” Christ’s redemptive work will restore the earth to what God originally intended. Everything touched by the curse will be renewed and transformed into something great. “Joy to the World”—by the power of the risen Christ, the old world will be transformed into the new!
How has Christmas changed for you over the years?
The radical change was when I, as a high-schooler, came to Christ. Suddenly I understood Christmas. In the years since then I’ve come to understand the grace of Jesus more each year. When our daughters were little I saw a joy and delight in their eyes that was like what I had in my heart as a child, but it was much better, because they knew the Christ of Christmas. Today they and their husbands walk with Jesus and this year their children will be experiencing their first post-natal Christmas. They’ll begin some of their own traditions, and perhaps carry on some of ours. Christmas is about giving—and in the giving we gain so much, for we draw near to Christ, the ultimate giver. As Jesus said, it really “is more blessed to give than to receive.”
What is the deepest prayer of your heart this Christmas?
That people would understand that Jesus is the person they were made by and made for. That they would understand that He loved them enough to go to the cross for them and pay the price for their sins so that they could live forever with Him on the New Earth, the eternal Heaven.
There’s a true story of a Christ-loving man who lay dying. His son asked, “Dad, how do you feel?”
His father replied: “Son, I feel like a little boy on Christmas Eve.”
Christmas is coming. We live our lives between the first Christmas and the second. We look back to that first Christmas and the life of Jesus on the earth for some 33 years—but we look forward to the Christmas in which the resurrected Christ will return and we, his resurrected people, will live with him forever on the New Earth. And right when we think “It doesn’t get any better than this”….it will!
Randy is the founder of Eternal Perspective Ministries, a Bible-believing Christ-centered nonprofit organization. The goal of the organization is to teach the truths of the Bible and to reach the unreached and needy of the world. These goals are accomplished, in large part through Randy Alcorn’s prolific writing. The organization also generously funds missionary and relief efforts across the globe. Read more about EPM, or visit Randy’s blog.
Check out some of Randy’s books:
Heaven
As the years pass and we watch more and more of our family, friends and mentors pass away, it is only natural to ask questions about heaven. In Heaven Randy Alcorn provides us with a well-researched and biblical description of heaven. Alcorn addresses our most serious questions about heaven, including the nature of judgment, and answers a few of our less serious questions as well, including the accessibility of cafe mochas in the sweet by and by.
If God Is Good . . . Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil
Difficult times beg questions about God’s goodness and power. Offering compelling true stories, fresh answers, and biblical insights, Alcorn challenges the logic of disbelief and reveals the big picture of who God is and what he’s doing in the world—equipping you to share your faith clearly with those experiencing pain and fear.
As Jake and Grandpa fish, watch the stars, and take long walks, Grandpa shares what the Bible says about the reality and beauty of heaven and Jake is comforted by learning where Grandma is. Breathtakingly illustrated by Ron DiCianni, Alcorn’s simple, loving story will help grieving children and adults alike.
When a shocking murder drags him into the disorienting world of inner-city gangs and radical conflict, columnist Clarence Abernathy desperately seeks answers to the violence and to his own struggles with race and faith. Clarence forges an unlikely partnership with redneck homicide detective Ollie Chandler. The two find themselves united against the powers of darkness vying for Dominion.