Christmas Celebrations

Many more Australians celebrate Christmas than there are Christians in the nation. I believe this is because we have replaced Christmas as a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ with family gatherings, parties, elaborate exchanges of gifts and extended holidays.

In my younger, more agile years, I decorated our house and front yard with lots of lights and colourful characters. They were not of Santa or reindeer or Christmas trees, but of the manger, the angel, the star and the characters from the original Christmas story. 

I did my best to convey the true message of Christmas to show why those celebrations were relevant - the real reason for the season - the extraordinary birth of the Son of God into our world to become its Saviour. 

Jesus, the immortal Son of the Father in heaven, humbled himself and came to earth to become mortal flesh. God prepared a body of flesh for His Son, similar but not the same as ours, and placed it as a living embryo in the womb of the virgin Mary.

For this reason, when Christ was about to come into the world, he said to God:
“You do not want sacrifices and offerings, but you have prepared a body for me.
[Hebrews 10 : 5  GNB]

And, in this body of mortal flesh, in the likeness of our sinful flesh,  He died for the sins of the whole world.

For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh,
[Romans 8 : 3  NKJV]

Isn't there so much that God does that is way beyond our human comprehension? 
We, the created, have little chance of understanding the plans and ways of the Creator. The best we can do is to know "the what" of God's doings and just conjecture and wonder about "the hows and whys", although the Bible does give us clues from time to time.

So we celebrate Jesus' arrival on earth as a babe at Christmas, not just because it was a  miraculous birth, but because his purpose in coming was to rescue us - by destroying sin and reconciling us all to God.

Wishing everyone a happy and safe Christmas as we celebrate Jesus' birth and enjoy the Church services, family gatherings and travel on our very busy roads. 

Blessings, Barry

BTW, the picture above shows the most decoration I can manage these days, and even that by using a painting I was able to purchase from a friend.
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Other published Writings at https://www.ibtechservices.com.au