Dying Brought New Birth

As I was submitting my last finals this week, I couldn't help remembering what I was doing at this same time last year. After finishing up with an early morning final on Friday, December 17, I came straight home and cleaned out the refrigerator. Uncharacteristically, I hadn't even gotten online yet that day to check my social media, and didn't get around to it until lunch time. The first thing I saw when I pulled up my Facebook was the horrible news that the Provo Tabernacle had been almost completely destroyed by a mysterious fire early that morning. I was sincerely shocked--both that half the day had gone by without my knowing what had happened and that my favorite building in Provo looked like a bomb zone. At the time, most of us merely hoped that the building was salvageable and could be rebuilt. I don't know that anyone anticipated President Monson's recent announcement about making it into a temple.

A few weeks ago, I was talking about the Provo Tabernacle Temple with a friend and she made an intriguing suggestion--perhaps the tabernacle needed to be purified by fire in order to prepare it to become a temple. While I don't know that I'm quite so fatalistic about the issue, it did get me thinking a lot about how something wonderful and beautiful is often born out of tragedy and loss.

On a seemingly unrelated topic, another friend of mine pointed out the fact that a lot of Christmas stories are centered on a mean character that undergoes some form of transformation--the Grinch's heart grows three sizes, Scrooge "became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as the good old city knew," and Henry Van Dyke's John Weightman learns the difference between building mansions on earth and mansions in heaven. The idea of transformation seems perfectly natural at Christmas time--since Christ's ultimate purpose in coming to earth was to help us to change our nature and return to live with God.

So what does a burned-out building have to do with Christmas, transformation, and the atonement? Well, Paul very beautifully points out that in repenting and changing, it is as though "our old man is crucified with [Christ]" and we are spiritually born into a new state of being (Romans 6:6). Just as Christ had to die that we might live again physically, so the bad things within us have to die in order for us to truly become who we were always intended to be. And while our transformation cannot be as simplistic as rebuilding an edifice or, in the work of one night spent with three ghosts, the instant overturn of all our former habits, there is infinite hope for us to be reborn and transformed every day of our lives. Out of the tragedy of sin and the pain of our own loss, we will always be salvageable--and not only that, we can be built into something more than anyone ever anticipated.

Ultimately, that is what Christmas is all about--a reminder that because a special Child was born over 2000 years ago in very humble circumstances, we are capable of more than we might imagine. And through our life's work of learning to rely on Him and carrying these truths in our hearts, I hope it can be "said of us, and all of us" that we understand what it means "to keep Christmas well." (A Christmas Carol)