Christmas and The Cross!
God comes to us in the Person of His Son, to pierce our hearts and fill them with His life. He comes to challenge every idea we have about ourselves and others by challenging our ideas of Him.
A virgin and a righteous man found themselves welcoming a new life far away from family and friends. How could it be that the greatest moment of human existence was celebrated with humble shepherds and barnyard animals? Their situation challenged their ideas of God and of themselves. This pattern continued, as together they remained faithful to the God who brought them together.
It had to be this way, because the child they welcomed was born to suffer. The weak, vulnerable child reaching out for love, comfort and protection was already showing to the world how God’s love would be revealed. The child born on Christmas Day is the same man whose lifeless body would hang upon a cross. He would be reaching out to us with His love.
Christmas and the Cross are inseparable!
Christmas is not the remembrance of something that happened in the past but the celebration of the way of life to which each of us is called. We bring ourselves before the child to discover the hidden God humbling himself before the human family — naked, weak, hungry, and in need.
If we can see the face of God in the child whose birth we celebrate, then we will see the face of God in the man whose death has set us free, whose blood washes our hearts and causes us to sing:
Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom His favor rests.
