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Christmas Considerations...
A warm, Merry Christmas to you!
This time of year seems to get busier and busier, doesn't it? It seems that the only true quiet time I have to be still and ponder the significance of this season is early in the morning or late at night before bed- great bookends to the seemingly endless day.
With Christmas in a matter of hours, I wanted to share a few thoughts the Lord has had me consider...
Consideration #1:
The Significance of the Shepherds...
In Luke 2 we see that the shepherds are:
.near
.faithfully doing their job
The shepherds were unassumingly doing their nightly duty- they were found faithful, attentive and at work.
They had no idea the Savior Shepherd would be revealed to them this Christmas night. They were on God's radar... The One who never slumbers nor sleeps {Psalm 121:4} saw fit to share the Good News first with the ones who otherwise would have likely heard last. It is also interesting that Jesus descended from David, a shepherd king...
Had Jesus been born in a palace or kingly setting, would the shepherds have come?
God sovereignly arranged the location and surroundings of Christ's birth as a picture that all would have access. Jesus, God in the flesh, humbled Himself on every level- open to the lowly yet worthy of all the riches and honor.
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” Luke 2:15 NIV
As the shepherds went, let us also go with humble outstretched hearts and on bended knee before the Savior King this blessed Christmas day.
Before time began, Jesus accepted the assignment, temporarily trading heaven's golden streets for hay in a manger. No cost was too great to save the ones He made. What love He displayed... The ultimate Shepherd King who came, would 33 years later lay His life down for the sheep {people} of the world.
“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep..."
Jesus came to earth in swaddling clothes...
He left in burial clothes...
and He is coming back one day in a royal robe!
Consideration #2:
Christmas is not God's response of panic, but rather His redemptive purpose!
This year in particular it has struck me that before the foundation of the world, Jesus was willing and prepared to save us! In Colossians 1:16-17,20 Paul beautifully articulates:
For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together...
and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. (NIV)
Christmas is a display of God's eternal love expressed through Jesus Christ the Messiah.
Prophecies fulfilled and God's sovereign plan unveiled, Jesus has come and desires to make His home in our hearts. Who are we that God would send His Son to be born, die and rise? Just as the shepherds, though, may we in humble wonder seek Him out or seek Him even more deeply this Christmas and in this new year to come...
“Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.
