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Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Presents and Promises
Micah 5:2-5; Luke 1:39-55
Christmas is all about presents. Not so much the ones we give each other, wonderful as they can be, but rather God's great gifts to us. This week we listen in on Mary and her cousin Elizabeth celebrating God's amazing generosity embodied in their two miracle babies.
Listen to the GODcast!
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CHRISTMAS MAGIC
There's something magical about Christmas.
Of course, I mean at least the joyous sound of familiar carols, the warm glow of candle light, the contagious spirit of fellowship and family we feel when gathered together in the church, by the tree, or around the dinner table.
But there's much more to it than these emotional markers of something extra special in the air.
For the truth of our Christmas story is that God has come among us in the birth of Jesus, born to poor parents in a borrowed stable, an animal's feeding bin his only cradle. So small, so weak, so open to all sorts of injury. But God-with-us, Immanuel.
The devout Oxford scholar C. S. Lewis spoke of the mystery of Incarnation this way:
"In the Christian story God descends to re-ascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity; down further still, if embryologists are right, to recapitulate in the womb ancient and pre-human phases of life; down to the very roots and sea-bed of the Nature he had created. But he goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world with him." (Miracles: A Preliminary Study, chapter 14, "The Grand Miracle")
In Christ, we're told, God stooped down low to join our human experience, then lifted us and all creation to the highest of heights. In him we get to see and hear the essence of God's eternal light, life, and love. (See the Gospel of John 1:14-18)
On Christmas Eve we concluded our worship by singing "Silent Night." The darkened Sanctuary was gradually suffused with warm light as, one by one, we lit all our little candles from the flame of one tall white "Christ candle."
"Son of God, love's pure light," Jesus once more lit up our hearts and our minds with God's own grace and truth, peace and joy, boundless eternal life.
Pure magic.
posted by Jack Buckley at
10:56 AM
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