Encouragement

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It’s Here! Christmas Is Here!
©
by

Stephen A. Peterson


It’s here! It’s here! It’s Christmas! The celebration of the birthday of Jesus Christ, the Savior of humankind for all times! It’s here! For twelve days, beginning with December 25th and ending on the day after January 6th, let every Christian and non-Christian child, woman and man rejoice in these most celebrated and beautiful of holy days (where we get our word “holiday”)!

On behalf of and in the name of the Savior, let us unwrap the gifts and give them! Let us visit with and rejoice with family and beloved friends! Let us eat and drink our Christmas meal in love and peace! Let our enemies be our friends in hope and joy! Let the world know PEACE and live it!

After weeks of preparing for His coming, this day we rejoice with a loud voice! The weeks of advent were a period of nervous anticipation. Christmas is the season of birth, awe and happiness! Advent looked to the past. Christmas celebrates the present! The greatest present to humankind ever!

During the course of the year 2004, we looked for and anticipated the possibility of His coming in the paradoxes of world events and in the ups and downs of our own lives. We looked for Him in the smiles of a child. We looked for Him in the praying, loving and gentle hands of a mother for her family and the world. We looked for Him in the working hands of a loving father for his family.

On this Christmas of 2004 we rejoice in His coming as the one who answers our questions about life! He answers our hopes and dreams! He is the long awaited Messiah—the suffering servant, the King of Kings, born in poverty, the Lord of Lords, Prince of Peace! He never came to satisfy earthly wants and needs though He often does. He came to unite humankind to Himself so that the gates of hell may not prevail now or evermore if we but accept His unconditional love that he freely gives. Since the riddle of His coming, many still attempt to try to make sense of His coming only to be made frustrated or angered by all of paradoxes. The leaders of His own nation rejected Him as false because they looked for a military leader. The intellectual today demonize His life as impossible while His loyal followers celebrate it.

His arrival was and is still paradoxical—that is, contrary to human expectation. On Christmas 2004, most, even some Christians, will miss Christmas because He is not what is expected. To experience Christmas happiness, awe and joy, each must find Him in their own hearts and minds. They must come to Him broken and just as they are…with their fears, their lack of intellectual certainty, gathering all that hurts, stresses them and de-energizes them to be brought to Himself.

On this Christmas 2004 let Jesus, the Baby, become so human that you know this very day you ARE a daughter or son of the Almighty Father bought with a price! So have a very, very Merry Twelve Days of Christmas! He’s here! He’s here! Our Brother is here with us forever!

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