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Wednesday, December 25, 2024

Christmas Stories

There are lots of Christmas stories. Rudolph, Santa, stories about angels among us, even a Die Hard movie. (Bet you didn't know that was a Christmas movie.) But, honestly the only real Christmas stories come from the Gospels. Mark's Gospel skips the origins episode, so to speak. He starts with John the Baptist preaching about Jesus. But we have others. The most famous Christmas story comes from Luke alone. Luke covers Gabriel's announcement to Mary (Luke 1:26-38), the trip to Bethlehem (Luke 2:1-7), the shepherds and the angels (Luke 2:8-21), all stuff that form our clearest images of the Advent. Matthew adds the wise men (Matt 2:1-12), but that wasn't at Christ's birth (Matt 2:7,16). Still, we count it as part of our Christmas story.

What about John's Gospel? He doesn't have that ... does he? I consider John's account to be the most important -- of having the most import. Here's what John writes.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. (John 1:1-3)
There we have His "origins" -- existing as God from all eternity. Don't miss that. Then John writes,
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)
That, dear readers, is the Christmas story. Stables and wise men, shepherds and angels, announcements and declarations, they're all part of the story, but the actual story is God ... became flesh. God's best expression of Himself -- the Word -- became flesh. He dwelt among us. The One who made the world became part of His world (Heb 1:1-2). The eternal God emptied Himself and became a servant ... who came with the express purpose of dying for us (Php 2:5-8). Tinsel and treats are fine. Songs and services are great. But ... "God with us." That's the real Christmas story, regardless of how many wise men there were, where the stable was, or whether or not the angels sang or spoke. God with us. Isn't it sad that we can get bored with that concept?

1 comment:

David said...

Let us praise Him forever, He who took on flesh to dwell among us, so that He could live a righteous life and die for our sins. The world may forget or deny. We can't.