The Christmas Season, what does it mean to me?
Merry Christmas!
Have we ever taken a moment and really thought about, what does it mean to me? Every year it seems to happen Thanksgiving comes rolling around and before we know it the Christmas season is upon us. We look forward to the gathering of family and friends, the table with a monstrous spread of our favorite food such as deviled eggs, turkey and many more fixings. Maybe we think about the parades or Christmas TV specials, and all of the Christmas present under the tree. I wonder if I'll get that something I've been wanting.
For those of us who call Jesus our Lord and Savior Christmas is the celebration of His birth. To use a phrase that I'm sure many of us has heard before “Jesus is the reason for the season”. Along with the greatest gift of all, the birth of Jesus, there are individual gifts that we have been given ie: grace, mercy, peace and hope to mention a few.
Grace; unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification
Todays science has made many advances but as far as I know no one has created anyway to regenerate someone and the word sanctification means to be made Holy. We may say we're giving you grace but real grace can only come from Jesus, through Him we can be made holy and only through Him.
Mercy; compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone from whom it is within one's power to harm or punish.
"And Jesus went forth, and saw the great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick" Matthew 14:14, He sees our pain our struggles and he's there to relieve us of them to take the weight off our shoulders.
Peace; freedom from disturbance, quiet and tranquility, calm, restfulness
Where do you get peace from?
What does peace bring you?
...Jesus is the Prince of Peace. Isaiah 9:6
Hope; to desire with expectation of obtainment; to cherish a desire with anticipation
Hope, it's a word we use from time to time. What do we hope for? Are we hoping to get that something special under the Christmas tree? Are we hoping that our leaders in Washington DC get their act together? A couple of years ago one of the Upwards Basketball devotions had discussed the topic of hope and here's what they had used to describe hope.
The hope that we have from Jesus is like a golden rope that’s right next to us at all times. It's there for us to hold on to no matter what the situation we're experiencing at the time. See the more struggles or troubles we fall into and the harder we pull on that rope to hold us up the more God holds on and He'll never let go.
We have touched on a few aspects that Jesus has brought into our world and I agree, Jesus is the greatest gift anyone could receive, but what if God never sent his son? Would we be able to experience grace, mercy, peace, hope?
I'm so thankful for Christmas. We do celebrate it as the birth of Jesus and of what Jesus brought with him grace, mercy, peace, hope and love. There's no love like the love you can receive from asking Jesus into your heart and letting him to be your personal guide in this life of ours.
