Christmas 2016

It is the day after Christmas Day. We are back home returning this afternoon to near 50 degree temperature, amazing. Our snow is mostly gone though I believe it would be classified as a white Christmas. We had a most enjoyable time in Palos Heights with our family. We worshipped at Elmhurst CRC at 5PM and were glad to find they still did "live" candlelight service to conclude the worship and sang Silent Night which is how we did Christmas Eve worship at all the churches we served. We had a wonderful Christmas dinner following worship back at Leah and Kurt's. We did a late morning brunch on Christmas Day followed by a fun time of exchanging gifts. The little girls of course have the most fun and probably get the most presents. The afternoon consisted of some card games by some, watching football by others and also we did the movie Secret Life Of Pets which the girls received as a Christmas present. (I must say I did not find it most suitable to our little girls because of the violent scenes through out the story.) Later at night with the little girls tucked in bed we watched the classic "Christmas Vacation" which our adult children seem to know by heart but still enjoy year after year which is why it is a classic. It should be a nice week at home with church office closed for the week which I assume means I do not do any pastoral visitations this week. I will still do my volunteer job on Tuesday and Thursday morning.

Titus 2:11-14 was an assigned lectionary reading this past week which particularly ministered to my soul. It reads as follows from the NRSV:
"For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds."

Surely Christmas is about the revealing of God's grace through the person of Jesus who is the babe born in Bethlehem. Grace the gift of God's love for my/our life even when I was depraved and living a life of sin and rebellion against God. Now that I have experienced this grace it means, as the passage so eloquently puts it, that I seek to live a life free of sin and rebellion, a God-like life. And even when I fail to live this kind of life Jesus has purified me for all time so that God accepts me and recognizes the righteous of Jesus covering my life. We also see in the reading the significance of do good works not to effect salvation but to reflect it.

Oswald Chambers states: "Just as Our Lord came into human histroy from outside so He must come into me from outside. Have I allowed my personal human life to become a "Bethlehem" for the Son of God? I cannot enter into the realm of the Kingdom of God unless I am born from above by a birth totally unlike natural birth, "You must be born again." This is not a command, it is a foundation fact. The characteristic of the new birth is that I yield myself so completely to God that Christ is formed in me. Immediately Christ is formed in me, His nature begins to work through me."

Jonathan Edwards, the Puritan theologian wrote: "Even true Christians still have remnants of a contrary spirit and may even be guilty of behavior offensive to such a spirit. But this I affirm, there are no true Christians who live in the prevailing power of such a spirit so that it becomes their character. The Scripture speaks of no real Christians who have an ugly, selfish, angry and contentious spirit. Nothing can be more contradictory than a morose, hard, closed and spiteful Christian. While allowances must be made for our natural temperament...we wee that the early church converts were remarkably changed." So I/we work at being the changed people who reflect the light and radiance of God present in our lives. Oh yes, "you will call Him Emmanuel which means God with us."

St. Augustine prayed; "O Lord, the house of my soul is narrow, enlarge it that thou mayest enter in. It is ruinous, O repair it! It displeases thy sight; I confess it, I know. But who shall cleanse it, or to whom shall I cry but unto thee? Cleanse me from my secret faults, O Lord, and spare thy servant from strange sins."

So we enter the last week of 2016 recognizing again the significance of God's grace revealed in Jesus Christ and thankful that Holy Spirit has enabled us to know and understand this divine truth.