Merry Christmas Dear Family and Friends!

God is giving out gifts today as always.

Do you believe it?  Do we believe this?

God? Gives us gifts?

Presents?

Presence?

He has arrived!

Bearing gifts.

This Son of God, Jesus, is here to gather up the fragments of our little lives, the fragments of our collected and hoarded disappointments and give to us Himself and all the trimmings that come with Him.

Like eternal life.

Like  His peace to us now as we live out our daily lives.

Like His Presence to dwell with us.

He is here as Emanuel! God with us!

His gift of eternal life starts today, now. It isn’t something that we need to wait for. We get to live today knowing that it is already a done deal.

His word to the shepherds when the angel of the Lord appeared to them in a field so many years ago is also for us, for our kids, for our grandkids and beyond.

So take this word and run with it. It is yours, ours for the taking and believing and living out.

And the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which shall be for all the people for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” (Luke 2: 10-11)

There has been born for you a Savior…

Can’t top that one.

May God or an angel speak to you today that there has been born for you a Savior.

And with that, I add a crispy -clear Merry Christmas!

There! Take that and run with this gift in hand as you go about your day today, as you celebrate this wonderful event – Jesus’ birthday!

Merry Christmas!

 

Mary the Mother of Jesus

One fine day Mary’s life took a turn, a God activated turn. A sudden turn.

One fine day she was betrothed to Joseph, engaging in a culturally arranged lifestyle of marriage with the promise of children to raise.

The next day or so it seemed, her life path took a sudden turn. Yesterday’s path was no longer an option. The sudden fork in the road had a signpost that read – YOUR LIFE/THIS WAY… NO LONGER AN OPTION/THAT WAY.

And because Mary was well-versed, because she knew her history – where she came from, because she knew God and His merciful ways, she was able to be a joyful participant in God’s plan for her life.

There was an innocence about her due to her youth. Perhaps not enough earth time had passed for her to grow cynical towards God- stuff like angels and prophecies of old now being fulfilled in her lifetime, on her watch, in her face.

An innocence that God preserved for such a time as this.

Gabriel bursting in on her planned future to announce God’s planned future for her brought a response that could only come from a God- worshipping heart. A heart devoid of years of built up cynicism.

Her response dripped with that innocence. “…but how? I’ve never slept with a man” (Luke 1:34 Message Bible).

She appeared to be ready to accept Gabriel’s answer to her question.

And not only accept it, her prayer response reveals her heart, reveals what she believed about God.

Mary’s prayer takes us into an expansive world of God’s promises that are in the process of being fulfilled. (Eugene Peterson – Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places p.273-74)

Hannah’s prayer from 1000 years earlier became Mary’s prayer of response to God.

And Mary said,

I’m bursting with God-news; 
I’m dancing the song of my Savior God. 
God took one good look at me, and look what happened-I’m the most fortunate woman on earth! 
   What God has done for me will never be forgotten, the God whose very name is holy, set apart from all others. His mercy flows in wave after wave on those who are in awe before him. He bared his arm and showed his strength, scattered the bluffing braggarts. He knocked tyrants off their high horses, pulled victims out of the mud. The starving poor sat down to a banquet; the callous rich were left out in the cold. He embraced his chosen child, Israel; he remembered and piled on the mercies, piled them high. It’s exactly what he promised, beginning with Abraham and right up to now. (Lk.1:46-55 Message Bible)

Mary was able to tap into that ‘expansive world of God’s promises that are in the process of being fulfilled’ and say yes to God, to the role He was giving her.

It is obvious from her choice of response that her life was built on the rock solid foundation of God.

When you come to a fork in the road of life that says YOUR LIFE/ THIS WAY…NO LONGER AN OPTION/ THAT WAY, how will you respond?

Might we learn from Mary, the Mother of Jesus?

Have You Ever Heard Of???

Ever heard of Cecil Francis Alexander?

How about Henry Gauntlett?

Ring a bell?

No?

These are names of two people that were perhaps quite obscure in their day but they left lasting legacies.

In their obscurity, they wrote, they created.

Passionate in their giftings and purpose, they left reams of papers full of hymns and musical compositions.

Although they lived in the same generation, they never knew each other.

For they were separated by country with Alexander hailing from Ireland and Gauntlett residing in Olney, England.

At some point God lifted the veil of obscurity in bits and pieces so that His handiwork could be completed on their watch of life and beyond.

As only God can do, these two people never met but their giftings collided, merging into a wonderful Christmas Hymn entitled Once In Royal David’s City.

She wrote the words, he wrote the music.

He merged the two. She never knew.

So who are these two rather obscure people?

Cecil Frances Alexander loved to write poems and hymns for children. Her passion was to make the Bible stories more meaningful to children. Her poem/hymn Once in Royal David’s City, appeared for the first time in a collection called Hymns for Little Children in 1848.

Henry Gauntlett was said to have composed over ten thousand hymn tunes in his lifetime. His passion for music began when he was a little boy. His determination to become a serious musician landed him the job of church organist at his church by age nine! A position that he held for the rest of his life.

Perhaps one fine day, Gauntlett discovered Alexander’s hymn/poem Once in Royal David’s City in that collection of Hymns for Little Children and knew that among his catalogue of many tunes he had one that fit like a glove to the words that she penned some years before.

I guess we will never know how it all happened.

But we do know this. They seized life with gusto. Gave their lives over to their calling. They probably never knew how far reaching their passions would go. And just like this story, we may never know the height, the depth, the range, the longevity that our influence, our lives, our giftings will have.

Perhaps we should take note and determine to live out the rest of our lives giving away our passions and our giftings, thereby leaving God -created legacies for those who come after our time here on earth.