Merry Christmas!
What a great reason for a celebration: God becomes incarnate - Jesus Christ is born - completely God, and completely human. Amazing. Athanasius, in his writings against Arius, noted that 'what God has not assumed, God has not healed'. We Christians often put all the emphasis on Easter as the culminating point of God's mission on earth. We don't realize that the salvation plan began in earnest on that distant night while shepherds watched their flocks. We should ponder this great mystery, that Incarnation. How wonderful God is, to have humbled Himself, and taking the form and very being of a human. Fully God, and yet, fully human. Not a human body but devine mind - NO. Somehow, fully God and fully human - only such a way as this could Jesus take upon Himself the sinfulness of all humanity, then, now, and future.
Have you thought about this on this great day of celebration?
Amidst all of the celebrating, the eating, the ripping open of presents, I hope you will call upon the Lord, and thank Him for the greatest of all gifts, His Son.
One of our Christmas morning traditions is for the kids to gather in my wife's and my bedroom so that we may read together the Jesus' birth narrative as presented in Luke 2:1-20, and thanking God in prayer for the gift of sending His Son. Then we run downstairs to enjoy the gift giviing and receiving. It was pretty cool - a very good morning.
I hope you, too, have had a good day with your family. May the rest of your Christmas be a blessed reminder of the Father's love for you, in the name of the Son, through the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. God's great blessings in Christ to you!
Amen, and amen.
What a great reason for a celebration: God becomes incarnate - Jesus Christ is born - completely God, and completely human. Amazing. Athanasius, in his writings against Arius, noted that 'what God has not assumed, God has not healed'. We Christians often put all the emphasis on Easter as the culminating point of God's mission on earth. We don't realize that the salvation plan began in earnest on that distant night while shepherds watched their flocks. We should ponder this great mystery, that Incarnation. How wonderful God is, to have humbled Himself, and taking the form and very being of a human. Fully God, and yet, fully human. Not a human body but devine mind - NO. Somehow, fully God and fully human - only such a way as this could Jesus take upon Himself the sinfulness of all humanity, then, now, and future.
Have you thought about this on this great day of celebration?
Amidst all of the celebrating, the eating, the ripping open of presents, I hope you will call upon the Lord, and thank Him for the greatest of all gifts, His Son.
One of our Christmas morning traditions is for the kids to gather in my wife's and my bedroom so that we may read together the Jesus' birth narrative as presented in Luke 2:1-20, and thanking God in prayer for the gift of sending His Son. Then we run downstairs to enjoy the gift giviing and receiving. It was pretty cool - a very good morning.
I hope you, too, have had a good day with your family. May the rest of your Christmas be a blessed reminder of the Father's love for you, in the name of the Son, through the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. God's great blessings in Christ to you!
Amen, and amen.
