What I am thankful for this year: Christ’s unassailable victory over sin and death

When one studies political ephemera and grapples with the difficulties that crop up in our everyday lives, it can be easy to lose sight of the bigger picture and, with that occasional loss of cosmic focus, perhaps also easily lose hope.

After all, there is much we have to take care of, and much that could drive us time-bound creatures to despair.

There are, for example, foreign entanglements that could soon drag us into terrible global conflicts; cultural forces that seek to undermine our relationship with truth and attack the pillars of our civilization; and politicians who seek to subordinate the will of the many in order to increase the power of a few. Wars, iconoclasts and tyranny are nothing new, but by and large they are newly conquered.

In the Middle East, God became human only two millennia ago and dwelt among us. Like many in America and around the world, I hold that he has conquered sin and death and that the gates of hell cannot overwhelm his pilgrim church on earth.

The Catholic political scientist Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn — welcomed as “great teacher and great man” by William Buckley Jr. – underlined in “The Ageless Christian‘, such as ‘Christ broke the power of Satan so that since Christ’s sacrificial death we live in an eschatological age in which evil fights only a rear guard, although this can cause quite considerable destruction of the good.’

In the pages of TheBlaze we often report on the nature of this rearguard action, in which the evil destined for destruction since crucifixion is wreaking havoc in the here and now. But as I reflect prayerfully each morning, I am filled again with hope and gratitude, and I realize that no matter how seemingly insurmountable our daily struggles are, the war was ultimately won for us.

Moreover, it was not won by remote decree. It was won personally in the ultimate form of revolution, when the Creator washed the feet of His creatures and suffered and died so that we might live.

GK Chesterton remarked in “orthodoxy’ that ‘Christianity alone has felt that in order to be fully God God must have been both a rebel and a king.’

Like our rebellious God before his final rebellion, we can break bread with our friends and families on Thursday, knowing that we have the Father’s love and the support of the Holy Spirit—and that we share in the Son’s eternal victory.

I am doubly thankful to God this Thanksgiving, not only that I should have spent this time on earth with my wonderful wife, unborn daughter and wonderful family, but also that we will meet again in our old age after we are of were delivered from sin and death.

I pray that you and your families, both created and saved by the perfect source of all love, truth, hope and wisdom, have a wonderful Thanksgiving knowing that victory is ours forever as we continue to conquer together fight a good fight.