12-13-2018

Good Morning All,

                    Psalm 68:5-6; “A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling.  God sets the lonely in families, he leads forth the prisoners with singing; but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.”

    While most of us truly celebrate Christmas, there are some who do not.  This is the time of the year when family is so important.  The popular media and culture really push this idea.  In a lot of ways, it is the way that the devil can try and destroy this joyous season.  It seems that in this country, anyway, that Christmas is for the wealthy, about the consumption and the “me” in our culture.  Even when we do a charitable work, we emphasize how it makes “me” feel good or gets “me” in the spirit of the season. 

    This became clearer to me as I read an article about how it was perfectly acceptable to celebrate Christmas without worrying about the “Christ” in it.  The season is about feeling good, being with family, exchanging gifts and working for peace on earth.  While this sounds good on the outside; it truly misses what Christmas really is about.

     Christmas is about the celebration of the birth of Jesus.  It is about coming to us, his redeemed children, with the promise of peace with him, the promise of the forgiveness of sins, the promise that God will be with us as we face the challenges and struggles of this world.  It is about a gift which we only receive and we receive it from God.  God uses the birth of his Son as the entrance into our sinful and wounded world.  He comes offering hope to the most hopeless.  He is the father to the fatherless, the defender of widows.  He provides for those who cannot provide for themselves. 

    The next line in our verse is of tremendous value to us all.  Because of sin, we all go through life alone.  Sin has destroyed our relationship with God and with our fellow man.  This means that all we do and want revolves around us.  Notice how that fits in with the way the world views Christmas.  It simply twists the truth and leaves us empty and alone.  We can never rationalize or bring ourselves out of this existence.  The only thing we can do is continue to delude ourselves into the cold existence of denial.  Yet God comes to us and he sets the lonely, us, into a family and it is not just any family; it is God’s family.  We join together with all of the other lost souls which God has rescued from the loneliness that the world offers.

    In spite of what the world tells us, Christmas is about God coming to you to save you from the wretched existence that sinful man (and woman) have in this world.  The sad and hard part is that we are still affected and buffeted about by the sinful acts of others and the sinful acts which we still commit.  Yet God keeps coming to us with his Word of hope, his Word of Comfort and his Word of forgiveness.  Christmas is just the start of God’s dramatic intervention into human life.  He continues to intervene into our lives and will continue to bring us the hope which the world cannot.

Dear Father, you are our father and we have no other.  You bring us into your loving, holy family to give us rest and the peace which only you can.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret