Did you hear about what happened to a 2-year old little girl in Pennsylvania a couple of weeks ago? She and her mother were at a mall (in the food court)…and her mother says that she took her eyes off the child for just a few seconds. When she turned around, the child was gone…but then the mother saw her daughter…inside one of those toy claw machines where you pay money to operate the claw (like a crane) and try to pick up stuffed animals.
The little girl had crawled up through the chute of the toy machine. She could get in, but she couldn’t get out. And as you might guess, the mother was frantic that she could help her little girl…but the fire department soon came and, in about 15 minutes, had rescued the little girl from the predicament she had gotten herself into.
That true story makes me think of Christmas and I’ll tell you why. It’s not because they were in a mall. It’s not that the little girl wanted something that she did not have. That story reminds me of Christmas because in the much bigger picture, we (you and I) are that little girl.
The Bible says in Isaiah 59:2, “But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God.” In other words, sin has a dividing effect…separating us from God. And at the end of the day—even with all our debating about the origins of sin—sin is a choice. We choose to sin. We chose to crawl up a chute chasing cute and fuzzy fun…and entered a cage—the cage of sin—from which we could not rescue ourselves.
This is why the story of this Pennsylvania 2-year old makes me think of Christmas. What the fire department did for that little girl in rescuing her, God did for us in a manger in Bethlehem more than 20 centuries ago.
Matthew 1:21—one of my favorite verses at Christmas and all year long—“She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins”
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