Hope is in the Air
By Grant Gaines
In the popular Christmas movie Elf, Santa Clause found himself in quite a difficult predicament one Christmas Eve. No, it wasn’t that foggy Christmas Eve when Rudolph had to come save the day with bright shinny nose. On this particular day, Santa ran out of fuel for the engines that propelled his sleigh while he was flying over New York City.
I know what you’re thinking, “Isn’t Santa’s sleigh pulled by reindeer rather than engines?” Kinda. Apparently, as the movie describes it, fewer and fewer people actually believed that Santa was real (I know, crazy people, right!??). It might not seem like that big of a deal at first blush, but when you learn that the only way Santa’s sled could magically fly without the aid of jet-propelled engines is through the belief of people, you can understand why he needed some jets attached to the back of his sleigh to make his Christmas rounds.
Of course as I mentioned earlier, on this particular Christmas Eve some careless elf must have forgotten to top the tank off before St. Nick made his evening rounds to deliver presents across the world which left Santa out of fuel in the middle of Central Park.
With no fuel and no “Magical-Sled Gas Stations” in the area, Santa was completely out of hope….
That is of course until the main character of the movie – Buddy the elf – finds Santa and is determined to save the day. But how could he make Santa’s sled fly again? The old fashioned way – by making people believe in Santa so much that the reindeer would have the ability to pull his sleigh for the rest of the day.
And that’s exactly what happened. Buddy and his friends persuaded the crowd that had gathered in Central Park to sing some Christmas carols with a believing heart and Santa’s sleigh was miraculously able to fly once again by the power of Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen and Rodolph rather than by an engine.
The day was saved because people believed in Santa once again. Belief was the key that opened the door to the miracle.
The same could be said for the government official who lived in Capernaum in Matthew 8. Jesus hadn’t been in town for even 5 minutes before this official came running to Jesus desperately proclaiming, “Lord, my servant lies at home paralyzed and suffering terribly” (Matthew 8:6, NIV).
I love this response from Jesus – “Shall I come heal him?” (Matthew 8:7, NIV).
Of course the official wanted Christ to come heal his servant. That’s why he told Jesus about his servant in the first place! But I believe the reason Jesus asked him that follow up question was because just like the official, so often we come before the Lord and just lay our complaints before him rather than really laying our requests before him.
“Lord, my back hurts.” “God, I really don’t like my job.” “Jesus, school is so hard right now.”
Just like this man, we lay our problems before Jesus rather than asking for the Lord to do something about it. In Christ’s response, however, we see that the Lord doesn’t want us simply to stop with identifying our problem but to also plead with the God who is able to solve our problems to do just that.
As the story continues in Matthew 8, the man obviously tells Jesus that he would be thrilled to have Christ heal his servant but that he knew Jesus didn’t need to physically be present with his servant to heal him. He believed all Christ had to do was say the words and his servant would be miraculously healed.
“When Jesus heard this, He was amazed…” (Matthew 8:10, NIV) and told the man, “Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would” (Matthew 8:13, NIV).
Jesus was so amazed at this man’s belief in His ability to heal that Christ healed the man’s servant according to his belief, “let it be done just as you believed it would.” The man’s faith was the key to the miracle just as the crowd’s faith in Santa was the key to the Christmas miracle in the movie Elf.
Now obviously faith (or a lack thereof) isn’t always the indicator of whether a prayer will be answered or not because God sometimes chooses to work in ways that are beyond our understanding. However, the theme of this story is one we must all take to heart – our faith affects a lot of our prayers. James 1:6-7 (NIV) tells us that when we ask God for something we must, “…believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like the waves of the sea, blown and tossed by the waves. Such a person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.”
With that in mind, I want to close this blog by asking you a question – if God answered all your prayers according to your level of belief, how many prayers would be answered?
“Oh Lord increase our faith!”
– Luke 17:5 (NIV)
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©Grant Gaines 2016
