My thoughts on the Christmas season 2008:
-We celebrate the greatest act of love ever in the history of humankind: the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, born to the Virgin Mary. The greatest, most specialized and specific and incredible and amazing proof that God, indeed, loves us. All praise and honor and glory to a God who really became "one of us" in order to save us, and even better, give us hope and meaning and purpose and life "here and now"!
A Message of Hope from John 1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known.
John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
Challenge this Christmas, in response to and contemplation of the Incarnation (Ph. 2):
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!
Revelation 22:20
He who testifies to these things says, "Yes, I am coming soon."
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
