Christmas 2012

I'm writing this note from my living room in the moments before the kids wake up and come downstairs.  The last couple days we were up in the mountains taking the kids to the snow and what a time we had.  We came right at the end of a good storm, making it to the cabin just in time before the roads became impassable and awoke to a spectacular scene of white!  We came home late last night and although it is Christmas, the kids are too tired to be up yet.

Since I am usually the first to awake, I turned on the computer this morning to get a few things done.  My Internet browser has a homepage set to a news site.  I need to change this.  In my stupidity, I browsed the recent headlines.  The news is just awful.  For example, in a town in New York where a friend of mine was a pastor, a man set fire to his house and then ambushed and killed two firemen coming to put out the blaze.  I was going to give a few more examples, but they're mostly depressing and terrible too and it seems as though the reaction by pundits and governments is to call for the removal of liberty in the name of "safety" and create some kind of Orwellian police state.  So I checked my e-mail box and it was stuffed with e-mails (sent today) from merchants telling me how I can spend my money.  They wanted to make sure that they sent it Christmas Day because the stores open tomorrow.  How very nice of them (sarcasm, of course).

So the the world is messed up!  Filled with selfish and wicked people.  But not entirely.  I recently read about a couple of English scientists that designed a gravity powered light in hopes of trying to reduce the reliance on dangerous kerosene in African villages.  There is both good and bad in humanity and there resides in the heart a longing for a better world that should be.

This is why I love Christmas.  It is a time of pause when people remember that there was a moment when God became man and physically entered our world.  The Powerful One who created everything beautiful and ideal (who wept over our sinful choices that have ruined everything) who left the splendor of Heaven, came down and chose to be born in a poor forgotten corner of our planet, revealing himself first to lowly shepherds, carpenters, and fishermen.

And it astounds me that His purpose in coming was to ultimately sacrifice Himself for us that he might provide a way of salvation to those who repent of their sins and follow Him.  Yes, the good news is our Redeemer has come, making a way to escape the righteous judgement to come on this world.

Thanks be to God for sending His Son!