Be inspired...

The story of Christmas is one with which we are very familiar. The opportunity that comes around once a year to focus on it once again can be very helpful, especially when we take time to reflect on it. Here are three thoughts and headings for your own meditation:

Reflection 1

The Christmas story is about the way God gets involved with the world. We sometimes use the word incarnation, which means becoming flesh. God came into our world as a human being. To put it in human terms, he rolled up his sleeves and got his hands dirty. He did not stay remote and detached but he became Emmanuel, God with us. God, in his compassion and mercy GOT INVOLVED. 

We too, as followers of Jesus, will be most true to our calling when we do the same. When we do that, we find that it can be difficult, messy, frustrating, and hard work. If that is how you have been finding life lately as you try to follow Jesus, be encouraged that you are following in the Master's footsteps. The Christmas story points us to the way of identification and involvement in our broken world, motivated by COMPASSION.

Reflection 2

The Christmas story illustrates how God's ways are so often different from our ways. Who would have thought up a plan of salvation like God's - a plan which involved the birth of his son as a helpless babe in a place used for animals? Who would have come up with a plan that involved his parents fleeing to Egypt to escape Herod's massacre? There is so much about the birth of Jesus that is surprising. The truth is that God does things very differently from us. Things that seem foolish and lowly often illustrate his divine wisdom. The Christmas story should provoke us to be humble. When we think we know it all and have got it all worked out, we are on dangerous ground. When things seem to us to be going wrong, from God's position, that may not be the case at all. We are in the best position in relation to God when we are dependent upon Him, with child-like dependence. That is true HUMILITY.

Reflection 3

The Christmas story illustrates that God's ways are costly. God is all-knowing and all-powerful. But He did not use His knowledge and power to make things easy for Himself. Giving up His only begotten Son whom He loves and who was involved in the creation of the universe, must have involved Him in unfathomable suffering. The helpless babe would graduate from a manger to the cross, crying out the words of the Psalmist, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

That God would consider us worthy of such a costly sacrifice is astonishing. Surely this should inspire us to gratitude and WORSHIP?

It is good to meditate on the Christmas story with the perspective of the Easter story. May we once again be inspired to COMPASSIONATE INVOLVEMENT, HUMILITY and WORSHIP.

Chris Moffett