God is Watching Over To Provide The Perfect Christmas Gift
Having just recently passed through the Advent Season of the year, I was struck again at the power that is in the telling of the Christmas story. It does have power, you know, because it is a totally unique occurrence that happened which ultimately has changed the world and everything in it.
Never before and never again will GOD become MAN that He might fulfill His great purpose of rescuing mankind from the plight of sin and destruction which he wrought upon himself.
What struck me this year is that an act such as this demanded a willingness to completely humble Himself to submit Himself to His own creatures whom He had made, and grow up as any normal child in the world would do. It is difficult for me to imagine our God humbling Himself to that degree in order to save His creatures from eternal death and destruction.
And as I pondered, I was literally overcome with the knowledge of the extent of the love of the Father to provide His Son as the sacrifice for our sins. What manner of love is this that a man would die for his proclaimed enemies?! To our finite minds, it is incomprehensible that a God who is so transcendent, so far above us, so much greater than we, would love us so much so as to extend that love to us when we were yet sinners; when we were actually turning our backs to Him; when we were in the act of running from Him. May we thank our Lord at the beginning of this New Year for watching over mankind to provide a sacrifice to bear our sins, His only Son, and that He sent Him at a time of the year which still brings us a special joy to remember and give thanks. We are grateful, O Lord, for your watching over us to send this most perfect and magnificent of gifts to us sinners, that we might experience the joy of receiving this gift of salvation through Christ and eternal life with You in Heaven!
For further thought and thanksgiving, please read Philippians 2:3-11
3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,
4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Mary Fawcett