O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie!
Above your deep and dreamless sleep,
The silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light,
The hopes and fears of all the years,
Are met in thee tonight.
We’ve all experienced the night before a major event. Maybe you’ve felt the complexity of getting everything together before a big trip, or the bustle of trying to make sure everything is perfect on the night before a wedding, or making sure to set two alarms before the first day on a new job. If you’re like me, I tend to wake up every hour on the hour, worried that I’ll oversleep!
That pent up pressure of expectation and hope is bittersweet. Usually, the event you’re about to experience is a good thing—your wedding, a new job, vacation, etc.—and there’s much to be excited for. By the same token, the sleeplessness and busyness of the night before is never enjoyable.
This, of course, is true of Christmas Eve as well. The expectation of the morning—gifts, a special breakfast, time with family—is pent up in the hearts of everyone together. Even the secular world recognized this is poems like ‘A Visit from St. Nicolas’.
This feeling of anticipation was perhaps never more true than the night before the birth of Jesus. Joseph and Mary were settled in the barn. They’d both seen visions about who the baby would be. They must have had all sorts of questions about what was about to happen. Would He be evidently supernatural? Would He speak immediately? Or would He be a normal infant? They had no idea!
Certainly there were no doctors or nurses around—just Joseph and Mary, and perhaps some extended family. Everyone was waiting for the coming of the baby, and no one was quite sure what was going to happen. The pent up pressure and expectation and hope in that moment must have been palpable.
But it wasn’t just the family that had that pressure. The hope for the coming of the Messiah extended way back into history—in fact, ALL the way back into history. The promise made to Eve in Genesis 3:15 of One who would come to deal with the sin problem, and the countless promises made between Eve and Mary were all bearing down on this moment. This had been a night that had been coming for 5000 years—an evening with generations of anticipation.
Philip Brooks, the pastor of Trinity Church in Boston, captured this feeling in his 1868 hymn ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem.’ The final line of the first stanza summarizes the pressure that existed on this evening.
‘The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.’
How true! All the hope and anticipation, all the fears and doubts came together in a single night and a single birth—the birth of the Savior.
And Jesus didn’t disappoint. He far exceeded the hopes of all the generations before and after. He was more than a match for all the doubts and fears over God’s power to save. Jesus blew all these out of the water.
So, let this be a special ‘night before’ for you this year. While you’re enjoying quiet time, or bustling to finalize gifts and breakfast, or getting kids into bed, remember the first Christmas Eve. Remember that all your hope is not on the morning that is coming tomorrow, but on the Light that came that morning so long ago. Remember the One who carried the hopes of humanity on His shoulders, and remember that He is already with you tonight.
Jesus has come, and regardless of how tomorrow goes—whether its filled with sad memories, or unmet expectations, or joyful and satisfying blessings—remember that He is the true hope, and that hope is fulfilled for you.
