Betty White’s television career spanned seven decades. The 2014 edition of Guinness World Records certified hers as the longest career ever for a female entertainer. The winner of multiple Emmy Awards, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1988 and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1995. When she hosted Saturday Night Live in May 2010, the show enjoyed its highest ratings in a year and a half. 

In preparation for her one hundredth birthday on January 17, People magazine featured her on its cover last week with the headline, “Betty White Turns 100!” Then, as you know, the famed actress died Friday morning at the age of ninety-nine. Some blamed the magazine for jinxing Ms. White. One person disagreed, tweeting, “I think Betty White would enjoy having made one last epic joke.” 

Of course, Christians know that life and what comes next are no joke: “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). But there is something in us that doesn’t want to admit that it’s true for us. We understand in our conscious minds that death is real and that the mortality rate is 100 percent. We know that Jesus could return tomorrow, or we could go to him today. 

But as you read these words, do they feel real to you? Are you living in the same certainty that you could die today as that the sun will set tonight? If not, why not? And why does the question matter so powerfully as we begin this “new year” together? 

Why is today “January the third”? 

For what reason is this a “new year”? The trees and birds don’t know the difference. The sun rose on January 1 just as it did the day before. Why do we call today “January the third”? Why do we call it anything at all? 

There are practical reasons for assigning numbers and names to days, of course. Imagine planning for the future without such a practice, from making airline reservations to setting deadlines for school and work. But there’s a larger, deeper force at work here. 

Naming things began in the garden of Eden: “Out of the ground the Lᴏʀᴅ God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name” (Genesis 2:19). 

God had earlier told humans: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:28). Part of having “dominion” over something is naming it. Thus parents name their children and children name their pets. 

Why Davy Crockett named his rifle 

There is a useful function here, of course: parents can call their children away from a busy street more easily if they use the name their child recognizes as uniquely theirs. Astronomers name stars and planets so they can study them with greater precision. Botanists do the same with plants, as do entomologists with insects. 

But there is an underlying psychological and very human force at work here as well. We want to name the stars above us whether we are astronomers or not. We want to know the names of plants and animals even if we are not botanists or veterinarians. 

Psychologists say we name people and things to infer power over them. Brand experts call this “taming,” bringing the object closer to ourselves and forming emotional bonds with it. We give names to machines to feel that they work for us, such as Davy Crockett’s naming his rifle “Old Betsy.” And we name things we cannot control in nature to nonetheless feel some power over them, such as Hurricane Katrina and the “Wolf Moon” coming on January 17. 

In this sense, we named the “year” that began Saturday “2022” to identify it for contracts, to date events, and so on, but also to “tame” it, to give ourselves a sense of control over the future it represents. 

Welcome to the year 5782 

The Jewish people do not do this. The Hebrew names for the days translate simply to “First Day,” “Second Day,” and so on. The seventh day is Shabbat, the Sabbath, which translates the Hebrew for “rest” or “cease work.” It is the only day that receives its own nonnumerical name since it is the day when God “rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done” (Genesis 2:2). As a result, their days remind them of God’s creation of each day. 

Hebrew months were originally numbered beginning with the month in which the Exodus occurred. Thus, any month reminded them of the Exodus: “six months since the month of the Exodus,” and so on. Names were added only after the people returned from the Babylonian exile and wanted to continue using names to which they had become accustomed. 

Jewish years are calculated from the creation of the world in common tradition; 2022 is 5782 in their calculation. But this did not begin until the twelfth century when the Jewish philosopher Maimonides established the timeframe for the traditional date of Creation. 

As a result, every day reminds the Jewish people of its relation to their Sabbath; every month reminds them of their Exodus from slavery into the Promised Land by divine grace; every year testifies to their creation and the providential design of God. They name the year not to control it but to honor and serve the God who makes each day and controls our future. 

A promise to learn and claim 

We’ll continue this discussion tomorrow. For today, let’s choose to be Jewish about 2022. Let’s begin a year filled with uncertainties and fears not by naming and “taming” our future but by submitting our lives and moments each day to our Creator and King. 

To this end, I invite you to claim and even memorize with me this promise as a theme for all that lies ahead: “This I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lᴏʀᴅ never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:21–23). 

Why do you need the steadfast love, unending mercy, and great faithfulness of Jesus today? 

Denison Forum

There’s a “candy cane crisis” in America. Logistical issues caused by the pandemic and weakness in peppermint crops are causing shortages in the industry.

In other news, a COVID-19 outbreak forced Saturday Night Live to air without an audience. The show sent home most of its cast and crew, airing mostly pre-taped sketches. The NFL postponed three games over the weekend.

And these stories are just the beginning of what is coming.

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas 2020”

Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN yesterday that the omicron variant is “going to take over” the country. He predicted that “it is going to be a tough few weeks to months as we get deeper into the winter.”

Coronavirus cases are already skyrocketing across the country. In New York City, for example, cases escalated from 8,266 on Monday to 21,908 on Friday, more than any other single day of the pandemic. The New York Times reports that the nation’s coronavirus testing capacity is facing “enormous new pressure” with long lines, overworked laboratories, and at-home diagnostics “flying off pharmacy shelves.”

With coronavirus hospitalizations increasing 20 percent nationally over the last two weeks, doctors and nurses are “living in a constant crisis,” as one medical director stated. Forbes reports that as COVID-19 restrictions are hitting the retail sector, “it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas 2020.” Offices are closing and holiday parties are being canceled. Countries across Europe are imposing new travel restrictions and curfews. Harvard is going remote again, as are other schools across the nation. President Biden will address the nation tomorrow to respond to the spread of the omicron variant.

It is especially hard to face this crisis in the days just before Christmas. However, Christmas offers the paradoxical hope we need most in these hard days.

A Christmas thought I had not considered

I read a message recently by Pope St. Leo the Great (AD 400–461) that made a point I had never considered before. He stated, “Unless the new man [Jesus], by being made in the likeness of sinful flesh [Romans 8:3], had taken on himself the nature of our first parents, unless he had stooped to be one in substance with his mother while sharing the Father’s substance and, being alone free from sin, united our nature to his, the whole human race would still be held captive under the dominion of Satan.”

He added: “The Conqueror’s victory would have profited us nothing if the battle had been fought outside our human condition.”

I knew that death was the debt we owed for our sins—the consequence of our sinful choices—since sin cuts us off from the God who is our only source of life and life eternal (Romans 6:23; John 14:6). And I knew that only a sinless person could pay the debt of our sins with his death; otherwise, his death would atone for his sins but not for ours (cf. Hebrews 4:15). Thus, I knew that Jesus came to earth to die for our sins (cf. 1 John 4:10) so we could be forgiven (1 John 1:9) and receive eternal life (John 3:16).

However, it had not occurred to me that Jesus would have to be human himself to pay this debt for humanity.

The love proven by Christmas

This is why the sacrifice of animals on the altar of the temple was not enough. Hebrews 10 states, “Every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God” (vv. 11–12).

No other species could pay this debt because no other species owed it. Humans alone of all God’s creation are made in his image and likeness (Genesis 1:26) with the capacity to choose whether to obey or disobey his word (cf. Joshua 24:15). As a result, we are the only species that “sins.”

The only way the debt humanity owes for our sin could be paid was if a human paid it. This explains Christmas: the decision by God to become man, to enter fully into the human condition, to face every temptation we face yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15), to be forsaken by his Father on the cross (Matthew 27:46) so we could be forgiven by his grace (Ephesians 2:8–9; Hebrews 2:14–15).

The necessity of Jesus’ humanity also adds even greater significance to his Father’s decision to create the human race. God knew before he made the first man and woman that they would sin against him and that their sins would separate them from himself. The Father therefore knew before he created humans that his Son would one day have to become one of them to die for them.

This explains why the Bible calls Jesus “the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world” (Revelation 13:8 NIV). And it is why the love proven by Christmas is the hope we need today.

“Grace, like water, flows to the lowest part”

I was taught in counseling classes not to tell someone “I know how you feel.” That’s because, even if my circumstances have been identical to theirs, I cannot understand their personal feelings as they face them.

But Jesus can.

Because “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14), “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses” (Hebrews 4:15). Jesus experienced hunger (Matthew 4:2), thirst (John 19:28), weariness (John 4:6), grief (Mark 3:5), temptation (Matthew 4:1–10), rejection (John 15:18), and death (Mark 15:37).

He has faced all we face and felt all we feel. In addition, because he knows our inmost thoughts (cf. Luke 6:8) and we are in his hand right now (John 10:28), Jesus truly knows how we feel at this very moment.

So, let me encourage you to go to the Christ of Christmas with your secret sins and private guilt. Trust him with your inmost fears, grief, and pain. Tell him what you can tell no one else and trust him for the help and hope only he can give.

Because God is love, he loves you where you are, as you are. And because Jesus became one of us, we can be one with him.

Philip Yancey observed, “Grace, like water, flows to the lowest part.”

Where do you need the grace of Christmas today?

Denison Forum

The twelve remaining members of a group of seventeen North American missionaries kidnapped in Haiti two months ago were released yesterday. Five of the hostages had been let go earlier.

In other news, a man in Western Kentucky played the gospel hymn “There’s Something about That Name” on a piano amid the wreckage of his home caused by last weekend’s tornadoes. He did not know that his sister was capturing the video, which has now gone viral.

We can use such good news amidst the hard news of the day:

• Five children were killed and another four critically injured in Australia after they fell thirty-two feet from a bouncy castle lifted into the air by wind.
• A Florida-bound jet crashed in the Dominican Republic on Wednesday, killing all nine people aboard.
• Two days ago, hurricane-force thunderstorm gusts impacted at least eighty million people from the Rockies to the Great Lakes.
• A powerful typhoon forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people in the Philippines yesterday.
• Hundreds of millions of enterprise and consumer devices are at risk from state-sponsored malware hackers.
• The US is facing a “double coronavirus surge” as omicron advances amid the ongoing delta pandemic. Understandably, according to a new survey, most Americans say they are “worn out” by COVID-19.

Why did Jesus do it this way?

Hard news always seems harder when it comes during the Christmas season. However, paradoxically, difficult times are precisely why Christmas happened the way it did.

We know that Jesus came at Christmas because “God loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10) so we could receive forgiveness (1 John 1:9) and eternal life (John 3:16) as the children of God (John 1:12).

So, Jesus came to earth to die for us. But why did he have to die the way he did?

Crucifixion is the most horrific, brutal form of tortured execution ever devised. Why did Jesus not die by hemlock like Socrates or a lethal injection such as is common today? “He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5), which shows that you will never face greater physical pain than Jesus bore for you. He died on a cross in solidarity with your suffering and mine.

But why did Jesus not go directly to the cross? Why his three years of public ministry?

Our Lord spent this time “teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people” (Matthew 5:23). Because he healed the sick and raised the dead, we can know that he is our Great Physician today.

But why did Jesus not come to earth at the age of thirty to launch this ministry? Why come as a baby who grew as a child into a man (cf. Luke 2:52)?

“In every respect [he] has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Because Jesus experienced the full gamut of humanity, he faced every temptation we face and can empower us to achieve victory whenever we are tempted today (cf. 1 Corinthians 13:12).

But why did Jesus come, not just as a baby, but as an infant born to a peasant teenage girl in a cow stall outside an inn in an out-of-the way village?

In The Hungering Dark, Frederick Buechner wrote: “Those who believe in God can never in a way be sure of him again. Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of man. If holiness and the awful power and majesty of God were present in this least auspicious of all events, this birth of a peasant’s child, then there is no place or time so lowly and earthbound but that holiness can be present there too.”

“It’s more challenging to serve him when times are bad”

Christmas proves that the creator and ruler of the universe (Colossians 1:16) is aptly called “Immanuel,” a name which means “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). If you need forgiveness, you can go to your crucified Savior. If you need healing, you can go to your Great Physician. If you are facing temptation, you can go to your sinless High Priest. If your circumstances are difficult, you can go to the manger-born Child of Christmas.

However, an unbelieving world doesn’t know what we know. For them to turn to Jesus for the grace they need, they must see his grace at work in us.

Rev. Wes Fowler is the pastor of First Baptist Church in Mayfield, Kentucky. After a tornado devastated their town last Friday night, the Associated Press reports that he and his church members immediately began the work of ministry, mobilizing to “provide whatever they can to help survivors cope with the disaster’s aftermath and stay afloat—gift cards, food, generators, water, a listening ear, and more.”

The congregation quickly formed three teams: one to help affected church members, a second to work on repairing the church campus, and a third to serve the broader community and coordinate offers of aid.

Pastor Fowler said, “It’s easy to serve the Lord when things are good. It’s more challenging to serve him when times are bad, and I think that’s really when people are looking to see if our faith is genuine, if our faith is true.”

Because of Christmas, we know that the Object of our faith is genuine and true. However, we must experience his reality if we would lead others to experience his reality. As Patty Hammond noted, “Your ministry will never be bigger than your vision of Jesus.”

How big is your vision of Jesus today?

Denison Forum