I’m wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas. I want to try to express the awe that I’m feeling right now for that tiny baby lying in a manger.
Sometimes I forget the magnitude of what he did for us. Imagine a holy, perfect, all-powerful God, sitting on his throne in heaven. We cannot even begin to know the glory and splendor that living in heaven must be like.
Yet, God chose, CHOSE, to come down to earth as a baby for us. This all-powerful God chose to become helpless and powerless. Instead of a glorious throne, his bed was a manger, out in a barn with the animals. He lowered himself for you and me and became human like us. He didn’t perform any miracles until around the age of thirty. He had the ability to do miracles, but chose not to use his power until it was time to start his ministry. He was subject to all the problems and discomforts that we are – and more. He truly knows our pain and our suffering. In fact, he went through far more suffering on the cross than most of us experience in a lifetime. And he didn’t have to do it! He CHOSE to do it.
In Luke 13: vs. 31-35 and Luke 19: vs. 28-44, is when Jesus is having his triumphant entry into Jerusalem, the week before his upcoming death. Everyone is shouting praises to him. Instead of reveling in the praise he is receiving, his heart becomes filled with sorrow and it says he wept over Jerusalem. He sees a lost generation and is overcome with grief at all the people who are unwilling to be saved.
He cries out “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!
His anguish at the ones that choose not to believe is apparent. He wants all to be saved, but he will not force us to believe. It has to be our choice. Our decision. Even after all the miracles he did and the good life that he lived, they repaid him by sentencing him to an excruciating and humiliating death on a cross. He didn’t do anything wrong! The only thing he did was miracles to heal people and to preach and teach the people in the hopes of saving them. To be treated so horribly when all you ever did was help people; that is such an injustice!
It’s amazing that he can love us that much. Like I said in the beginning, I am in total awe of that tiny baby in a manger who came to save you and me.
I hope that all of you realize how truly blessed you are to have such an amazing God and Savior. He loves you. He wants you to believe in him. That’s all you have to do. Believe in a God that loves you so much he sent his son to die for you to pay the price for your sins.
I wish all of you a very blessed holiday season and a new year filled with joy and the love of Jesus. Merry Christmas!
Michigan Mary 