STILL WITH US! ~ 12/23/08

I was going to write something different today; it might have even been helpful.  I’ve been planning to cover some miscellaneous Christmas traditions and explore their origins, was going to finish up this 3 part Christmas season with an even-keeled look at such things as Christmas trees, gifts, the name “Christmas” – all of that.  But then I saw the star.

 

“Huh,” was my first thought; “That’s a wee bit arrogant.”  I was driving through a local neighborhood when I saw it – a huge, lit up star, prominently suspended directly over someone’s house.  In the Biblical account of Christ’s birth, the star was to direct attention to the location of the world’s savior.  “He’s come, and He’s here,” it seems to say in Scripture.  But this, this was just another house, 2000 years later. 

Then it hit me.  Like a dummy getting hit with a ton of bricks, it hit me – and it was perfect!  It wasn’t inappropriate or arrogant or anything like that – it was wonderfully, perfectly right on.  I know the family in the star-clad home, and they’re Christians.  And their glowing star was trying to communicate one simple message to each harried and stressed driver that sped past: “The Savior has come, and He’s here in this house.  He is still with us!”

I wonder... maybe I’m not the only one who gets so caught up in re-telling the first Christmas story that I forget the story is still happening today, still happening right now.  You see, that first Christmas was like the arrival of a special guest, a visitor; Jesus came as a visitor.  I say a “visitor” because He came as a man, and as a man, like every other human, His days among the living were numbered.  I suppose, in that same sense, we’re all just visitors here, which makes what Jesus did on the cross and his raising from the dead all the more significant –“
…he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy”” (Col. 1:18).  Jesus, the visiting God made flesh, was the first and only able to defy death, rising again, so that He would forever remain more than the ‘holy visitor.’  Without the cross and without the resurrection, Jesus would not be “God with us.”  At best, He would be “God with them,” God to and for those people 2000 years ago. It is only because of His death and resurrection that Jesus fulfilled and lived up to His name as Emmanuel, “God with us.” 

Jesus didn’t leave us because Jesus is still alive today.  “Behold, I am with you always” (Matt. 28:20), He tells us, and His birth into the ranks of humanity was just the beginning of what ultimately made that promise possible. He came as a visitor… so He could stay. He was born into our human family so that we might have a way to be born into His.  On that first Christmas, God was born with a human heart, so that you and I could receive God’s heart the moment we put our belief and trust in the risen and living Jesus.

Christian,

~ are you weary? 

GOD IS WITH YOU.

~ are you in financial difficulty? 

GOD IS WITH YOU.

~ are you struggling with sickness or pain? 

GOD IS WITH YOU.

God is still with us, because of “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27).  There is a star over your life, if you know Christ, and it’s message remains the same: ‘The Savior has come; and you can find Him here.’ "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden” (Matt. 5:14). 

Surrounded By Grace,

Josh