What Child Is This?

What Child Is This (Luke 2:17)?

 "There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.  People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.  Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in a cloud' with power and great glory.  Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."  Luke 21:25-28

            In the season of Advent, we not only wait expectantly for the birth of Christ.  We also wait with expectation and   anticipation for Christ's return.  Jesus recounts in this   scripture the cosmic signs foretold by the prophets that will precede his glorious return.  These signs are not meant to scare us.  Rather we as disciples of Christ are to look  forward to Christ's return, because the coming of Christ does not signal doom, but rather redemption.

            God of redemption, we wait for you during this season of Advent.  We await the birth of our Savior Christ Jesus in a manger, and we await the glorious return of your Son.  Help us to live our lives in anticipation of your glorious return.

            This Christmas season, more than any other Christmas season in my long, eventful life, the world needs to know the real reason for the season. To the believer in Jesus Christ, you have something the world of unbelievers does not have, ACT LIKE IT.

            The unbelievers, resorting to technology, Mac computers, Ipads, Iphones, etc., looking around at the conditions around them, if possible, would just push a button marked: reset. The truth is, the whole matter, sin, world, flesh, the Devil, was settled-reset long ago. It was settled in a little town called Bethlehem. The year 1960, the adventure branded into my soul, this writer spent Christmas in Bethlehem. On Christmas day, church of the nativity, the cave-stable where tradition tells us Jesus was born. I so well remember bowing down and going into the very small opening into the church. The great doors of the cathedral had been permanently closed because years before, Muslims hordes rode their horses right into the church.  Only the most radical atheist-hater of the Judeo-Christian faith, could not be moved by the experience of visiting the birth place of the SAVIOR OF THE WORLD. I stood there, my mind active with the sight of Joseph arranging hay in the smelly place for Mary to lay down, even brushing the cobwebs-debris from a manger where the infant would be laid.

            At the university, I had studied Bible archeology, a student of The Bible my entire life. Mixed-blended with my studies in physics, chemistry, anatomy, etc., no study in the world will compare with the study of God's message for the world, found in his book, dictated by him.

            Line up the world's best known atheists (Richard Dawkins, Peter Singer, Christopher Hitchens, Bob Ingersoll (both dead), even Paul Kurtz, Woody Allen, etc.), and this old blind, blood soaked believer will defend his redeemer. Jesus was everything that Satan was not, living and dying, resurrecting, leaving to the world-way, truth, life. The transformed world of believers could present a very long line of those who God chose to live with him forever and those given to Christ know the "blessed assurance" of their daily walk with him.

            In the world's religions, Jesus is the only one who is prophesized. No student with an IQ above room temperature could ever doubt the historical fact of Jesus. Christmas, truly, was the greatest event in the history of the world. But, the fact that he was willing to leave the glory of Heaven, put on a tent of human flesh, come to earth as a baby, poorest of circumstances, though King of Kings, Lord of Lords, lived as a poor servant, should certainly affect our climate of spending and spree-ing during this season. A season which has become a holiday not a Holy day.

           

            This writer was born on a dirt road knowing the poverty of Eastern North Carolina, no power, phone, water lines, blessed to have parents who wanted Christmas to be special to their children.

            As a young boy, I so wanted a bicycle for Christmas. In the depths of the Great Depression, no money, a second hand bicycle...a girl's bicycle, but, I had the discernment to be happy with it. All my father's farm equipment had been bought second hand at auctions. Farmers marauded by the Great Depression. As with my bicycle, these pieces of farm equipment, he would take apart, lubricate-recondition everything. Like the forgiveness of our Lord, only those who know sin can welcome forgiveness. God deliver me from people, educated or otherwise, who have never realized the triumph of the redeemed, the happiness-joy of salvation-achievement having known the bleakness-barrenness of deception and defeat. Jesus came to give us everything that sin cannot give.

            On the cold Christmas, in that ancient cave-stable, I could well imagine God's VOICE on earth for the first time, in the cry of a baby.

            The unpretentiousness of it all, the herald haters of good in the world surely believe that God's son, creator of the universe, would have been born in a King's palace of luxury. His first worshippers, dirty, un-kept, shepherds, the lowest of the low in that culture. They were not allowed in the temple, could not give testimony in court but, they are the ones God chose to give VOICE of his coming to a world of need...first missionaries.

            General William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, once sent a Christmas telegram to the thousands of Army churches around the world. Always aware of money, he just used one word, "Others." General Booth, buried 100 years ago, 1912, said, "The chief danger in the 20th century will be, religion without the Holy Ghost; Christianity without Christ; forgiveness without repentance; salvation without regeneration." Sinfulness-shamelessness grow in a garden of leisure.  It does not matter what the world thinks, Christians this year more than any other year, should cling the promises of the Christ child.