Fairytale: Mission

Artist: Scott Erickson

Introduction

Others-focused living—blessing, hospitality, prayer, zeal, and peace

“They triumphed over him

    by the blood of the Lamb

    and by the word of their testimony;

they did not love their lives so much

    as to shrink from death.” 

(Revelation 12:11 NIV)

"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." –G.K Chesterton

The scripture I love to read to my three boys on the night before Christmas is not the one from any of the gospels. It’s not about shepherds or angels or wisemen or kings. It’s about a dragon. And a woman. And a baby.

It's an epic cosmic picture of the Christmas story. Think about the nativity story but from another galaxy. It’s in Revelation and it’s a little wired and extremely nerve-racking. But it’s an important story.

The picture is of a woman about to give birth and a dragon waiting there for the baby to be born so it can devour it. See what I mean about a little nerve-racking? The dragon hates the woman but hates the child even more. Is there any picture you can think of that is scarier than a woman about to give birth in the midst of the presence of a dragon?! It sounds like a plot in an epic fantasy film. And in a way, it is. It is the all-time epic fantasy - the story that keeps being told a thousand different ways. The story of redemption. The story of overcoming. The story of how the seemingly innocent and helpless victim lives and overthrows the best the enemy throws at her. Against all the odds, the baby lives. Against all the fiery fury of the dragon, the woman is safely delivered and the baby survives and the dragon knows IT’S END IS NEAR.

This is the crazy, ridiculous nature of the Christmas story. It’s an epic battle where the good guys really do win. Where the dragon is thwarted, where even the earth opens and participates in the escape route to make sure that life wins, that the baby survives, that the woman is delivered. It’s an epic fantasy tale of survival and humanity’s ultimate deliverance. It is the gospel.

The good news that dragons exist but can be beaten. 

The amazing reality that deliverance will come, and that against all the odds, the little guy can overcome.

I get how stories about Santa and reindeer and magic snowmen can capture the imaginations of children who wish to believe in something bigger and better than the humdrum realities of daily life. But how much more exciting and magical is the reality of what we believe about Jesus? How much more incredible are the exploits of a baby who escapes a dragon only to go on to defeat him when He grows up? The story of Christmas—this nativity account from a cosmic perspective is straight ‘fairytale’. Almost too good to be true, apart from those of us who know this truth—who have experienced that good can come from desperate and weary places, statistics can be broken, poverty can be defeated, and what often looks like the most hopeless place in our world and in our lives is actually the place where deliverance comes.