Christmas Eve: Joy to the World!

Read Isaiah 40:9

All my heart today rejoices
As I hear, far and near
sweetest angel voices
"Christ is born," their choirs are singing,
'Til the air everywhere
now with joy is ringing.

Hark! a voice from yonder manger
Soft and sweet doth entreat;
"Flee from woe and danger!
Brethren, come from all that grieves you,
You are freed --
All you need I will surely give you."

Come then, let us hasten yonder!
Here let all, great and small,
kneel in awe and wonder!
Love Him who with love is yearning!
Hail the Star that from far
bright with hope is burning!

- Paul Gerhardt

Week 4, Wednesday: Another Arrival

Read Revelation 22:16-20

It might seems strange to some people to spend the month of December ancitipating and preparing for a birth that happened 2000 years ago. Why bother rehashing details and events that are so well known? Why take the time to wait for old news?

Part of the answer is that the arrival of God's Son in Bethlehem has so many parallels to his arrival in our hearts today. Reflection helps us make it personal.

But there's something more, too. Because there will be a second arrival. Christ promised to come back. Grasping the wonder of his birth should serve to make us long for his return even more. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

O God, our loving Father,
help us rightly to remember the birth of Jesus,
that we may share in the song of the angels,
the gladness of the shepherds,
and the worship of the wise men...
May the Christmas morning
make us happy to be thy children
and the Christmas evening
bring us to our beds with grateful thoughts.,
forgiving and forgiven, for Jesus' sake.
Amen.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson

Week 4, Tuesday: No More Lists

Read Luke 2:25-32
Christmas seems to be all about lists. Santa, of course, has THE list, or two, really. Lists of the naughties and the nices. Then the adults have lists of things to do and all the kids have the lists of things they want.

Simeon didn't have a list. He only had one thing he was waiting for: comfort from God. And God had told him he wouldn't die until he saw it.

Then one day, he feels compelled to go to the temple, where he sees a baby that's barely a week old. And Simeon is completely satisfied. He didn't need to live on until the baby grew up and did something. He didn't need to wish for the day Israel would be out from under the Romans. Having the chance to just see Jesus and know he was alive was all Simeon needed in order to have peace and joy.

What's on our lists this Christmas? What are we waiting and hoping for? Will we recognize Jesus as being enough?

Week 4, Monday: God in Furoshiki

Read Luke 2:7, John 19:40
Here in the home stretch before Christmas, the focus shifts from the gift buying to the gift wrapping. You've got the presents: now it's time for presentation.

Good gift wrapping is an art that takes skill and care. You want sharp corners, no rips, and invisible tape. You are wanting the packaging to reflect the meaningfulness of the gift. And packaging creates a sense of wonder. What's inside?

The Japanese have a gift wrapping technique known as furoshiki. Instead of paper, they use cloth to wrap their gifts. The cloth is both practical and beautiful, and it can be used on more than one occasion.

When God gave us Jesus as a baby, he came furoshiki-style, in cloths, lying in a manger. He was wrapped up like a precious gift. And there was the sense of wonder that comes with a wrapped gift: Who was he? What would he become?

But that wasn't the only time Jesus was wrapped in cloth. Cloth was used on another occasion, at the end of his earthly life, when he was laid in the tomb. The similarity of the wrapping reminds us that his death was also a gift, a great sacrifice of love, wrapped carefully, just for us. That too was a wonder: Who was he? What did it mean?

As you wrap your own gifts this year, what are you wondering about Jesus? Who has he become in your life? Take a moment to thank God again for the gift of the life and death of his Son, so carefully wrapped and presented to us.

Week 4, Sunday: God Dives Deep

Read John 1:1-14, Ephesians 1:8-10

In the Christian story, God descends to reascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity...But he goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with him...

One may think of a diver, first reducing himself to nakedness, then glancing in mid-air, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through green and warm water into black and cold water, down through increasing pressure into the death-like region of ooze and slime and old decay; then up again, back to color and light, his lungs almost bursting, till suddenly he breaks surface again, holding in his hand the dripping, precious thing that he went down to recover. He and it are both colored now that they have come up into the light: down below, where it lay colorless in the dark, he lost his color, too.

-- C.S. Lewis, Miracles

Week 3, Saturday: The Gift of Gift-Giving

James 1:17

Gift giving takes a lot of work -- at least if you decide to not opt for the fallback gift card option. What makes a present perfect for someone? It has to be something that is what the other person has been wanting, but maybe that they've never even told you out loud. And when they open it, they immediately know how much you care about them because the gift communicates your love.

God is the ultimate gift giver. His gifts are good and perfect. He likes to do it (Matthew 7:11), he knows what our deepest wishes are (1 Peter 1:8-9) and we know by what he gave how much he loves us (John 15:13).

As you scramble to do your last minute shopping and are racking your brain for what to get that person on your list, take a moment to thank God for how much effort he puts into his gift giving, and how well he knows you.

Week 3, Friday: The Journey of the Magi

Read Matthew 2:1-16

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The was deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter."
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires gong out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

- T.S. Eliot

Week 3, Thursday: I Ponder as I Ponder

Read Luke 2:19

If you've ever tried canning your own fruit and vegetables, you know what an exact process it has to be. In order for the food to be properly preserved, you have to follow strict guidelines regarding time, temperature, etc. Miss a step and you won't have anything to feed you later.

When Luke tells us that Mary treasured all these things, the word in the Greek really means "preserved." She didn't let those fleeting moments fade in her memory -- she worked to keep them alive. And they continued to feed her later.

Part of the preservation was her pondering. She reflected carefully and thoughtfully on the events, working them out in her mind, making sense of them and incorporating them into her life. That deliberate choice to hold on to and understand what had happened no doubt was what gave her the ability to trust Jesus so completely in his adult ministry (See John 2:1-5).

What has God been doing in your life? Are you preserving and pondering it? It will feed you well later.

Click on the link below for a music video to help you ponder the work of Christ.

Who Am I? - Casting Crowns

Week 3, Wednesday: God Picks Hicks

Read Luke 2:15-20

Shepherds were not known for their wealth or power. They were low on the totem pole when it came to social status. They also had a reputation for being thieves and cheats. Rabbis discouraged people from buying anything from a shepherd, because chances were it was stolen goods.

So it makes you wonder: Why would God choose people like that to announce the arrival of Jesus? Why would they be the first ones on the scene? Who is going to even believe them?

God has never gone for the impressive choice, humanly speaking. He chose Moses to be his spokesman, when Moses hated public speaking. He chose little David to be king instead of his big tall brothers. He chose Paul to represent him when Paul had been trying to kill his followers.

Why would he do that? The answer seems to be "Because he wants to." None of us are chosen by him for what we bring to the table -- we're just chosen. That way God is the one who gets the glory (See 1 Corinthians 1:27-31). When we're not under the impression we were selected on our merits, it frees us up to focus our attention on God instead of ourselves. We can just be grateful.

Look how the shepherds responded: They got up and did what God asked, they believed, they praised God and they spread the news. What an awesome example for the rest of us.

Week 3, Tuesday: Joy to the World

Read Luke 2:8-14
What makes you feel the most joyful? Reading a good book? Hanging out with friends? Being all by yourself? Chances are it may be different for each person in your family. So when the angel talked about a joy being for all the people, what did he mean? How could there be something that would make everyone happy when we're all so different?

For Eric Liddell, joy meant running. Eric was a missionary to China in the early 1900s who was also an Olympic athlete. He was known as the Flying Scotsman, and he loved to run -- head back, eyes closed, arms waving. In the movie Chariots of Fire, he told his sister, "I believe God made me for a purpose. But he also made me fast. And when I run, I feal his pleasure."

Maybe that's the key to understanding the joy of Christmas. Maybe the only joy big enough for all of us is God's own joy, spilling down from heaven. Ephesians 1:9 tells us he made known his will to us for HIS pleasure. Hebrews 12:22 says Jesus came and died for us for HIS joy.

The news the angel brought was not just about a source of potential joy for us -- it was about joy that already existed -- God's deep joy in performing this act of love.

Week 3, Monday: The Unstoppable God

Read Luke 2:1-7

You never fly as the crow flies. Get used to the country mile.
- Emily Saliers

Nothing seemed to go the way Mary and Joseph expected. First there was the shock of the news Mary was pregnant. Then there was the wrinkle of the census. Then there's the panic-inducing realization that you'll have to deliver the baby in a barn. It's a string of unplanned events that could have sent them over the edge. But they rolled with it and kept going forward. And really, they had no choice: That baby was coming regardless of what was going on at the moment. God's salvation plan for the entire human race was as unstoppable as the arrival of a baby.

What is happening in your life right now that feels like it could derail you? What unexpected and maybe unpleasant surprises have caught you off-guard? You can find hope knowing that nothing can derail God. His work is unstoppable. One way or another, he will continue to work in around and through whatever obstacles come your way.

Week 3, Sunday: Smells Like Christmas

Read Ephesians 5:1-2

What's your Christmas scent? For some people, it's the smell of sugar cookies. For others, it's mulled spices. And for many people, it's just not Christmas without that Christmas tree smell.

They say that memory is most closely attached to our sense of smell. You catch a hint of a fragrance on a breeze and it takes you right back to a moment from your childhood or a treasured time that is forever lodged in your mind.

In a similar way, what Christ did for us had a spiritual scent to it. It's the smell that triggers God's memory. It takes him back to the cross. He remembers the work of Jesus dying for us instead of remembering our sins. That's a powerful aroma.

What's remarkable is that Paul tells us that when we have Christ in our lives, we can carry that same scent of Christ into the world (2 Corinthians 2:15).

What does that look like? How do we take "everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him?" This Christmas, as you smell all the various smells, ask God to help you embody the sweet aroma of a life full of Jesus.

Week 2, Saturday: Upside Down Cake

Read Luke 1:46-56
It's all in the flip.

Pineapple Upside Down Cake looks like any ordinary cake when you first take it out of the oven. Kind of plain. It doesn't even have any frosting. But then -- the key to the whole process -- you turn the pan upside down. And when the cake falls out, you discover a beautiful surprise. All these pineapple rings that were cooking in the bottom change the cake from average to amazing.

Read through Mary's song and a theme comes through: God has turned things upside down with the birth of Jesus. What reverses do you find in the song? What unexpected surprises has Jesus brought into your own life? How is God different from what you thought he would be like?

Mary also does something unexpected. In the face of a future that would have scared most anyone, she chose to turn things upside down and praise God and see it as a blessing. And when she did, she found all kinds of things he was doing for her.

Praise always finds the pineapples.

My Soul Doth Magnify the Lord Video

Week 2, Friday: God's Excessive Spending

Read Ephesians 1:7-8

Each year, there's the same guilt-inducing question: Are we spending too much on Christmas presents? There are all kinds of Christian organizations now that encourage people to get back to the real meaning of Christmas and quit the spending spree. Even Charlie Brown thinks we've gone too commercial.

Those are good reminders, because we DO lose sight of Jesus in the mall sometimes. We forget how good we already have it without adding to our stockpiles. And burdening ourselves with a load of debt won't feel very good come January.

But there is another side to the issue, a shockingly unexpected side. Because God overspent on us that first Christmas. He broke the bank. Ephesians uses the word "lavished", which means excessive and superabundant. He poured out his love in a way that cost everything. He went all out.

So here's an unconventional bit of advice: If you're going to spend too much on your friends and family this year, redeem it. Turn your excess into a mirror that reflects God's excess. Pour out love in a way that demonstrates his love. Let them know not only how much you care, but how over the top God's care is for them as well.

Week 2, Thursday: Roads Less Travelled

Read Matthew 1:18-21

"Two roads diverged in a wood..." Joseph could have written Robert Frost's famous poem. He stood at a crossroads, having to choose between what WAS right and what LOOKED right. He had spent a lifetime building a reputation as someone who did the right thing. And in this case, everyone around him would have told him the safe choice was the right one. It came down to what God was telling him and whether or not he would believe it.

What is God asking you to do that feels like a risk? Are you facing a choice between a safe path and the right one?

In the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lucy asked Mr. Beaver if Aslan was safe to be around, since he was a lion. Mr. Beaver responded, "Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King I tell you."

Following God may not always feel safe. There is risk involved in doing the hard thing. But he's always good. He always has our best interest at heart and knows what will end up being the right path in the end.

He's the King I tell you.

Week 2, Wednesday: Rethinking Impossible

Read Luke 1:34-38

"I can't believe that!" said Alice.

"Can't you?" the queen said in a pitying tone. "Try again, draw a long breath, and shut your eyes."

Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said. "One can't believe impossible things."

"I dare say you haven't had much practice," said the queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Alice actually had it right.

You CAN'T believe impossible things. That's why they're impossible. No amount of practice before breakfast can change facts. Mary was no more inclined to believe impossible things than we are, which is why she wondered how what the angel had told her could happen.

But Gabriel wasn't asking her to believe the impossible -- he was asking her to rethink it. And what he told her was that impossible didn't exist with God. If he can do anything, there's nothing impossible to believe, because "all things are possible."

Is there anything in your life that has felt like it would be impossible for God to do? It is not beyond him. Take it to him today.

Week 2, Tuesday: Mary, did you know?

Read Luke 1:26-33

When Gabriel visited Mary, Luke tells us she was greatly troubled by his words. What do you think Mary was so troubled by? Have you ever had a time when something in God's Word was troubling for you?

The angel's response to her anxious heart was to encourage her with two thoughts:

1. You have found favor with God.
2. Jesus will rule forever.

Those two concepts can still alleviate most of our fears today. If we have God's favor through Jesus, nothing can ultimately touch us, because as it states in Romans 8:31, "If God is for us, who can be against us?"

And if we know Jesus will never lose his place being in control of the universe, it frees us to trust him with our problems.

What are your biggest fears today? Take them to the one who in charge, who just happens to also be the one who favors you.

Week 2, Monday: The Icebreaker Cometh

Read Luke 1:5-17
It's pretty amazing to see the big ships that plow their way through the frozen oceans of the Arctic. They carve a path through the water an inch at a time.

John the Baptist came like an icebreaker ahead of Christ, carving out a path through the hardened hearts of people. He was the one prophets said would prepare the way. The angel said he would do that in some interesting ways: by turning hearts of fathers to their children, and by making the disobedient pay attention to the wisdom of the righteous.

Here's the question for today: If you want to be a person ready for Christ to work in your life, what kind of ice needs to be broken in your heart?

Week 2, Sunday: The Meaning of It All

Read Matthew 1:18-21

Think about what it would have been like to be Joseph. Would it have been difficult to accept the news about Jesus? The angel told Joseph it was going to be okay, because what was happening was the result of the Holy Spirit and it would bring salvation.

What in your life has been difficult to accept? God's work isn't always comfortable or according to our plans. But we can know that if it is the work of the Holy Spirit, it will be for our good.

Week 1, Saturday: Return of the King

Read Genesis 49:10

Old and new Christmas songs often talk about Jesus leaving his throne to come to earth. And in one sense that is definitely true. But in another way, he came to claim to be the one true king the writers of the Bible were talking about.

What does it mean to have Jesus as a king? What kind of authority does he have in your life? Genesis says that the sceptre came to the one it rightfully belonged to. Is there anything you're holding back from Jesus that rightfully belongs to him.

Week 1, Friday: O Christmas Tree

Read Jeremiah 23:5-6 and Isaiah 11:1-5

If you go to decorate a Christmas tree (at least the real kind), you may have learned that not all the branches can bear all the heavy ornaments. Some are too weak or flimsy to hold up.

Next time you are looking for a strong branch, think about Jesus, who the Bible calls a Branch. What did the authors mean when they called him that? What strong qualities do you see in him?

Listen to Lo How a Rose E'er Blooming

Week 1, Thursday: To Infinity -- And Beyond

Read Psalm 89:26-29

Have you ever thought much about the relationship between God the Father and God the Son? In this Psalm, we learn about a covenant made within the Trinity, between Jesus and his Father. God promises that the love he has for his Son will be permanent and unshakable, and that Christ's kingdom will last forever.

When Jesus came to earth as a baby, when he grew up and died for us, it was God's way of including us in those promises. When we have Christ in our lives, we get with him all the security that comes from how solid his own relationship with God is.

Thank you God, for letting us in on the same love you share with Jesus. Thank you that just like nothing can separate the Father and Son, nothing can separate us from the love we have in Christ. Thank you that it will go to infinity and beyond.

Week 1, Wednesday: Humble Beginnings

Read Micah 5:2

If you visit Bethlehem today, you will find the Church of the Nativity, built over the site where Jesus is believed to have been born. The church has an unusual entrance -- a tiny door that has been called the Door of Humility. Adults have to stoop down in order to enter.

It's a fitting reminder that Bethlehem was a pretty humble town when Jesus came to earth. Unimpressive by any standards. And yet that was where God chose to send his Son. He still chooses humble places to do his work, "the weak to shame the strong."

Week 1, Tuesday: Proper Preparations

Read Malachi 3:1

What's your favorite family tradition when it comes to preparing for Christmas? There's always something to do to get ready for Christmas: Lights to put up, stockings to hang, etc.

There were preparations to make before Jesus came to earth as well. Malachi tells us someone will come before him to prepare the way, and we learn in the New Testament that that was John the Baptist.

What kind of preparation did the people need to be ready for Jesus to arrive? What kind of preparation do we need to make to be ready for Christ to work in our lives today?