I still remember the day I discovered smelling salts. I was a kid, wandering through my grandfather’s garage. He had run a junk yard for years, and it takes a certain kind of person to do that. You don’t throw much away. You hang on to things because they might be useful someday. You learn to see potential where other people just see scrap. And over time, that way of thinking fills your space.
His garage was packed full. Tools, parts, old boxes, things I couldn’t even identify, all kept for one reason or another. It wasn’t organized, and it definitely wasn’t safe. But for a curious kid, it was a great place to explore.
One day I came across an old medical kit. It looked like it had been sitting there for years. Inside were bandages, small bottles, and these little glass vials wrapped in gauze. I had no idea what they were, but that didn’t stop me. I picked one up and gave it a squeeze. It snapped. The gauze got damp, so I brought it up to my nose to see what it smelled like. One deep breath and I’ve never forgotten what happened next.
It hit me instantly. My sinuses burned, my eyes started watering, and my whole body jolted awake. It was sharp, overwhelming, impossible to ignore. For a moment, nothing else existed. Every sense I had was suddenly wide open. Later I found out it was an ammonia inhalant. Something used to wake someone up. And that’s exactly what it did.
The more I’ve thought about that over the years, the more I’ve realized how fitting that picture is. Because there are some things in life that don’t just gently settle in. They hit you. They wake you up. They force you to see what’s really there.
The Gospel is like that. We tend to think of the Gospel as something comforting, and it certainly is. But if that’s all we see, we haven’t really understood it. The Gospel doesn’t just comfort. It confronts. It wakes us up.
That’s what’s happening in that familiar scene in Luke 2. The shepherds are out in the field, just doing what they always do. It’s an ordinary night with nothing unusual going on. And then suddenly, everything changes. “An angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them; and they were terribly frightened” (Luke 2:9).
Heaven breaks through this ordinary night in a dramatic way. And then the message comes: “Do not be afraid… I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today… there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10–11).
That’s the Gospel. And like that moment in the garage, it’s meant to wake us up. One of the first ways it does that is by forcing us to see something we don’t naturally want to look at. It wakes us up to the reality of our condition.
We have a way of going through life without really dealing with that. We stay busy and try, almost endlessly, to distract ourselves from it. We fill our lives with enough noise that we don’t have to think too deeply about anything.
But underneath all of that, there’s something there. You see it in people who seem to have everything. Success, comfort, recognition. And yet there’s still something unsettled. Still something missing. The reason for that, according to Scripture, is because: “There is none righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10). And “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
That’s God’s indictment on all humanity. The problem isn’t just out there somewhere. It’s in us. We don’t just live in a broken world. We’re part of the brokenness. That’s not an easy thing to face. And most of the time, we’d rather not. But the Gospel doesn’t let us stay comfortable. It cuts through it and brings clarity. It jolts us awake.
If it ended there, it would be hopeless. But thankfully, the same message that exposes the problem also reveals what God has done about it. When the angel says, “today… a Savior has been born,” this isn’t theoretical or abstract. This is something that happened in real time, in history.
From the very beginning, God had promised that He would deal with sin. “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” (Genesis 3:15).
That promise runs all the way through Scripture. Through Abraham, through David, through the prophets. And then, at just the right time, it happens. Not the way that people expected. Not through power or force, but through a child, and ultimately through a cross.
God didn’t stand at a distance and tell us to fix ourselves. He came near. “For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son” (Romans 8:3). That’s the Gospel. Not what we can do to reach God, but what God has done to reach us. And when this supreme reality really sinks in, it changes things. You don’t see yourself the same way. You don’t see your life the same way. You don’t see your need the same way.
But even that isn’t the end. Because the Gospel doesn’t just deal with the past. It doesn’t just address the present. It points forward. We still live in a world where things are not right. We still deal with loss, pain, and all the effects of sin. That hasn’t gone away. But it’s also not the end of the story.
“And He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death… or mourning, or crying, or pain” (Revelation 21:4). That’s where this is going.
There’s a line from Fyodor Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov that really captures this. In a painful conversation about evil and suffering, he writes: “I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for…” And he goes on to describe a day when everything will be brought into such perfect harmony that even the deepest pain will be answered and reconciled. He’s pointing us to this great truth that in the end suffering will not have the final word.
That’s what the Gospel promises. And when you take all of that in; when you breathe it deeply, it does something to you. It’s not mild. It’s not something you just nod at and move on from. It’s like that moment in the garage. Everything suddenly comes into focus, and you can’t ignore it. The Gospel does that. It wakes us up to what’s real. It shows us who we are. It shows us what God has done. And it points us to what’s coming. The angel called it “good news of great joy… for all the people” (Luke 2:10). That’s still true.
The question is whether we’ve really let it reach us. Whether we’ve just heard it… or whether it has actually awakened us.
Thessalon, ON