The Family: No Substitute This Christmas
We simply cannot find a substitute for the family. God planned it that way. Nothing on earth comes close to the benefits derived from relationships revolving around our roots. Nothing.
The problem with an often-told story is trying to hear it the way it originally unfolded and affected people. The Christmas story is a prime example…familiar and predictable. But the events surrounding the birth of Jesus were anything but expected! So much so that most of the Jewish people who were eagerly waiting for their Messiah totally missed His arrival!
Insight for Living offers a number of helpful resources that can help you see the Christmas story from a fresh, new angle. See this wondrous event through the eyes of the ordinary, everyday people whom God chose to involve. You’ll come away with a better understanding of the original meaning behind it all and with a heart bursting with gratitude for the incarnation of the Son of God.
We simply cannot find a substitute for the family. God planned it that way. Nothing on earth comes close to the benefits derived from relationships revolving around our roots. Nothing.
My advice this Christmas? Allow the traditions of the season to stir you up by way of reminder. Allow the things familiar to point you to things essential.
Where can you find truth this Christmas? Certainly not in the fairy-tale hype of the season. Only in the baby in the manger, who grew up to become the greatest of all teachers, can you find truth to nourish your soul.
This Christmas season, let’s keep our heart and eyes on our Lord and Saviour by remembering His first coming on that Holy Night, and be encouraged that His second coming is imminent.
Somehow the joy of the season remains that one gift we don’t open. Why? We usually blame our condition on the commercialism or on those overcrowded shopping malls. But the real reason our joy stays wrapped up? Our selfishness.
Want to make this Christmas season one to remember? Let’s consider how to move into the neighbourhood with our celebration. Let’s help people know God’s love this season by being generous inside and out, true from start to finish.
Christmas is right around the corner. How about filling a cup full of kindness? An authentic extension of love to someone who doesn’t deserve it. Now there’s a new idea for a Christmas gift that would never be forgotten.
Jesus’ birth occurred in obscurity. Luke juxtaposed that obscurity with the angelic pronouncement regarding Jesus’ exalted identity. This pronouncement conveys key historical and theological points which Luke wanted to make clear in his gospel.
On that first Christmas, the divine Son of God took His first human breath as He entered humanity as one of us. The moment of Jesus’ birth was an event like none other in history, and it changed the world forever. Its appeal was...and still is...irresistible!
Two millennia ago, God answered the anguished cry of humanity by making “the problem of evil” His own. God Almighty became Immanuel, “God with us.” He lived as we live, suffered as we suffer, died as we die, yet without sin.