From The Sheep Pen

You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Deuteronomy 6:5
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16
This is My commandment, that you love one another as I loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends John 15:13

It is Easter morning. Christians, rejoice because Christ has risen! The tomb is empty for death has lost its sting forever. Christ the Lord is alive. Alelluia. Alelluia. Praise God. For us Jesus’ resurrection is the core and the culmination of our faith. He alone is our eternal hope.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.1 Cor.13:13

This week has surely been about love. It is the divine love of God for His human children. The great commandment of the Old Testament was a peek into the heart of God. He wanted man to choose to love Him, to say yes to Him. He commanded Israel to love Him with every molecule of their being – but He gave them free will, even knowing how men would rebel constantly and fail repeatedly. Nevertheless, God’s loving kindness kept Israel as His own people whenever they repented and returned to Him.

This week has been about the love of Jesus for the Father. Jesus, the only begotten Son, came to this earth in obedience and love to fulfill God’s plan of salvation for men. Jesus, full of truth and grace, epitomized God’s commandment to love: He loved God with all His heart and all His mind and all His soul and all His strength. Jesus taught his followers that God was a loving, caring Father, something unknown in the world before. He heard His Father’s Voice on the mountains as He prayed so often in the mornings. God was Abba to Jesus, a loving Papa. Surely the divine Voice speaking to His beloved Son poured love over and into Him, so that He would overflow that love into the world.

Easter Sunday testifies that Christ’s love conquers all darkness, vanquishes the grave and is the immortal light of eternal life. He who was prophesied as the sacrificial Lamb of God, who was bruised, beaten, crucified and bore the stripes of our punishment laid down His life out of love. He loved us first even as the Father loved Him even to the cross. There is no greater love. It overcomes the darkness. The empty tomb proves its power.

God’s love in Christ Jesus and in us has no equal. There is no other faith, religion or philosophy that offers what God has offered in His Son. The world does not and cannot comprehend Easter Resurrection because the world does not love God or His Son or His Spirit. Blind eyes and deaf ears reject love which is sacrificial. It is that precise kind of love which surrenders to God in love and offers mind, soul and body that faith and hope in Jesus offers everyone. For this He came into the world – so that no one would perish.

For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. John 3:17

The message of Easter is this: God’s unfathomable love offers Jesus to all who ask. What greater gift is possible?

And Jesus said to him, “Go your way; your faith has made you well.” And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him on the way. Mark 10:52

Once Jesus arrives in Jerusalem for Passover, all his actions move toward the cross. He confronts the Pharisees, preaches in the temple and exhorts his disciples, especially on faith. But before theses events unfold, in both Mark 10 and Matthew 20, before Jesus enters Jerusalem two blind men and Bartimaeus. call out to Jesus with loud voices. “What do you want me to do for you”, Jesus asks Bartimaeus. He answers, “that I may receive my sight.” Jesus tells him, “Your faith has made you well. “ In both instances, the encounter ends beautifully with the men’s healing and following Jesus. By faith, blind eyes were opened and they saw Messiah.

This week the church continues to celebrate Christ’s last days. The faith of Christians in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is visible to a world very much lost and spiritually dying. Along with much else that is good and true and morally right, faith is under attack. Ask the man on the street what he believes in, what his faith is in and I’d surmise there might be one of these responses: (a) Faith? What’s that? (b) I’ve lost faith in everything. (b) In myself.

Faith in God, eternity, people, and history are replaced by cynicism and mistrust. Worse, like truth, faith is mocked as irrelevant or whatever the cultural watch dogs demean it to be. Believers, that is people of faith , are ridiculed and increasingly persecuted. It is a dangerous time to stand up for faith in the Lord Jesus.

How then should Christians witness our faith in Jesus’ salvation and resurrection? What can one say to the person who argues that faith is pointless, a delusional construct. Or for the realist who demands tangible proof? Is there anything to offer the person who lost his faith in God? Of course there is! Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Share the parable of the fig tree!

Read Mark 11 and Matthew 21. In both accounts as Jesus heads toward the temple, he is hungry and sees a fig tree. Despite it being the season for fruit on the tree, it bears only leaves. Jesus curses the barren tree which immediately withers. Astonished, the disciples want to know what happened. Jesus uses the incident to teach about the power of faith to move mountains. The disciples would need “fig tree” faith to sustain them in the days to comeBe assured, Jesus tells them,

So Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Have faith in God.’ Mark 11:22
“if you have faith and do not doubt, not only will you do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen.…Matthew 21:20

Faith in God is inseparable from Jesus, especially in the last week of His life. He believes the Father, hears the Father and does only what the Father instructs him – even to his own death. Jesus has the hopeful assurance, substance and foundation of the things which are not seen – in his Abba Father. He has the conviction of things not seen, as Paul describes in Hebrew 11:1 Faith in God the Father takes Christ to His death and resurrects Him from the grave.

Is anyone still blind? In faith? In Jesus? The resurrection power of Christianity’s Holy Week is still, always, unendingly available to people of faith through Holy Spirit of Christ abiding in us. Faith opens our eyes to see Him just as the blind men did.

Our testimony? A week in which unshakeable faith in Jesus can miraculously proclaim, “Go your way. Your faith has made you well.”

…in hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began;Titus 1:2

I woke up this morning to a flicker tapping on the roof like an annoying alarm clock. Then when I came downstairs and looked outside, it was snowing. Again. Another storm has moved in with leaden skies, cold, sleet and – more snow. Surely it’s time for spring to show up and show off, for the birds to come back and for the brave green shoots to open up their flowers. After all, it’s practically mid April. Easter is but six days away. There should be flowers blooming and birds singing.

Winter storms will eventually leave. Earth and sun will move closer together just as God ordains. It will become warm again for all seasons occur in due time. We may grumble about April snow but know that this too shall pass, eons upon eons. So we hope – let new spring life come quickly.

Beginning yesterday with Palm Sunday, this is Holy Week in the Christian Church. It is a week to reflect on the Gospels – what Jesus did, what Jesus said, what Jesus taught right up to the cross. The chronology of Jesus’ last week on earth is the core of Christianity’s religious celebrations this week. We remember and celebrate the last days of Jesus’ life as He resolutely moved from His triumphal entry into Jerusalem to Golgotha’s crucifixion and then to His resurrection on the third day.

Jesus’ resurrection is the central tenet of Christianity which separates our faith from every other because it offers the one thing that no other religion can. In Jesus alone, the fallen creation regains hope. Life does not end with death. Our hope is that because Christ lives, so shall all who believe in Him.

I believe we can’t fully grasp Jesus’ seismic impact on humanity. Jesus lived in a world and time of utter darkness. It was a world without light or hope. From Adam up to Jesus, fallen man was under the curse of death. For all millennia creation was as if in unending grey, dreary, lightless winter without any respite or hope of spring. Death was the end and nothing could change man’s returning to dust. And then came Jesus of whom John wrote:

In Him was life, and that life was the light of men.…John 1:3

As Jesus entered Jerusalem, the people mobbed Him desperately. God had been silent. There had been no Jewish prophet for over 400 years; no one was speaking for God or interceding for Israel until John the Baptist appeared. The Jews were brutalized and oppressed by Roman rule. Millions were volatile, dangerous and rebellious. They wanted a messiah to lead them out of their oppressive hopelessness and to wreak vengeance against Rome. They acclaimed Jesus to be that Messiah, addressing Him as son of David and shouting “hosannas” as He entered Jerusalem. Their false hope was that Jesus was their liberator. Instead, they rejected Jesus as Lord, as the hope of their salvation.

As you read the Gospels this week, put away our 21st century perspective for a few days and try to see the hopelessness of first century Jews and Romans and Gentiles and even the disciples. See with Jesus’ eyes day by day, hour by hour as He walks toward the cross to lay down His life for a hopeless, turbulent world. Let God’s Word in Holy Week Scriptures awaken us to the enormity of His sacrifice. The world is still gripped by winter’s darkness. People are abysmally and desperately in need of hope. Allow the magnitude of the empty tomb on Easter Sunday to strip away every pretension and false hope.

Doctrines do not give hope. Only the Son of God can: hope of reconciliation with the Father, the hope of eternal life, the Hope of the Holy Spirit indwelling in us. We who are the Jesus’ “hope of glory” must offer Resurrection hope to those who are crushed.

When asked, “Why Jesus?” I say because there is no one else who offers the tree of life, Himself.
The Lord is all I have, and so in him I put my hope. Lamentations 3:24

Our Father, Who Art in heaven

Jesus prayed. He healed the sick, fed the multitudes, forgave sinners, cast out demons, taught in the synagogues, made disciples and walked among us. Unarguably, before, during and after his miracles and his ministry to the poor, the sick and the lost, Jesus prayed. The Lord’s voice was an unceasing voice of prayer.

The Gospels record that for Jesus prayer and thanksgiving were inseparable. One can only imagine what the Lord said to His Father in those early mornings on the mountain, whether He wrestled and wept or spent His time in absolute glorious worship. But in His public life, Jesus continuously expressed gratitude for His heart was anchored in God, in Love.

Before He took care of people’s needs, Jesus thanked God. The feeding of the multitudes is described in all four Gospels as two different occasions: Matthew 14, Mark 8, Luke 9 and John 6. In both times, the Lord took a few loaves of bread and some fish, gave thanks and miraculously fed huge crowds.

Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, Jesus spoke a blessing and broke them. Then He gave them to the disciples to set before the people. Luke 9:16

When he had taken the seven loaves and given thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute to the people, and they did so. Mark 8:6

Before He raised Lazarus from the dead, Jesus thanked God, glorifying the One who had sent Him. He spoke and testified that those mourning Lazarus would believe Jesus was the Truth, Life and Way.

They took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. John 11:41

I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.” John 11:42

Before Jesus went to cruelly to the cross to suffer and die, He spent His final hours celebrating the Passover with the disciples. At the Lord’s Supper, he shared bread and wine with them. He no longer multiplied bread and fish for thousands, but eternal life in Himself, for countless millions and billions. First Jesus prayed:

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.” Matthew 26:26.

An old hymn proclaims: “I heard the Voice of Jesus say..” Do you want to hear from God? Do you really want to hear the Voice of Jesus? Do you want to feed hungry souls, raise those who are dead and broken? Do you need strength in persecution and trial? We say yes, but foolishly grasp at the outcome before fulfilling the requirement. Jesus still speaks through the Holy Spirit inviting us to respond with heart -filled thanksgiving, honor and praise before undertaking any other ministry. Let gratitude testify to those who need to hear, whose eyes are still blind and who are chained in darkness.

Blessed are You, God our Father. Thank you that you hear us. Help us pray like Jesus. May gratitude be the cornerstone of every prayer!

And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned… and glorified God Luke 7:15

In the story of the ten lepers whom Jesus healed, only one returned. He responded to his healing by turning back to Jesus, falling at His feet, giving thanks and glorifying God. The Samaritan leper was like the paralytic whom Jesus healed on the Sabbath. For both of them, gratitude was immediate, loud and specifically praised God.

When Jesus asked, “where are the other nine,” He wasn’t questioning their ingratitude toward Him personally, but pointing out their ignorance and ingratitude to the Father. Jesus’ ministry always focused on giving glory and honor to the Father, not Himself. Jesus was never satisfied to address what was apparent or superficial in men. His questions turned men’s souls inside out.

Our gratitude has to be more than words, more than thank you God for this favor or that blessing or helping me in such and such a mess. I confess to such responses far too often. I spend a few minutes in prayers of thanksgiving – and truly, I am very grateful. The intent is the right one, but does it go far enough according to Jesus response to the healed leper? How rarely do the best of prayers become worshipful “falling at His feet and glorifying God.”

Since Jesus admonished the nine lepers who did not return, then let the Holy Spirit also convict us if we don’t fully focus on God’s abounding grace toward us. Gratitude is incomplete unless it moves us to fall before Jesus and give the Father every glory due His Name.  Whenever God answers our prayers, whether it is “yes, no, or not yet, ” we have the beautiful opportunity to give God praise and glory with more than a Hallmark response.    Like the leper, like the paralytic and the blind men whom Jesus healed, return to give thanks at the feet of the Savior with hearts wide open. Does not our loving Father deserve more than a dash of thanks dropped into the spiritual mailbox?

Will it be through music, song or poetry? Will it be through a time of rest and peace in His presence? Will it be with kindness and  love toward another? Will it be in silent adoration?  Will it be  searching the Scriptures for new revelation,  discovering more and more reasons   to glorify God?   The Holy Spirit which convicts will also show how God desires us to respond through the Word and through our  unique gifts. Thus, we pray –

Now to the King eternal, immortal, and invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. 1. Timothy 1:17

“A  leper now cleansed embraces His Lord,
The  healed paralytic  dances for joy –
In bowed adoration, their hearts become songs
of thanksgiving and praise to the glory of God. ”

“And forget not all His benefits” Psalm 103:2

There is a single theme which the Holy Spirit never ceases whispering to me. Have a grateful heart. Thank God no matter what. Bless the Lord at all times.

Sincere, humble gratitude  is the antidote to the world’s poisonous self exaltation. It check mates pride.  However, gratitude is more than words. It arises from knowing the full extent of God’s love and forgiveness, laying down all pretenses and responding to His mercy. For some of us it’s the reality of having been utterly lost – and then being found by the very One we’d been running away from. It is impossible for me to ever forget “being found” by God’s grace. Once restored, a broken heart refuses to return to its old self because it’s tasted and seen the goodness of the Lord. Psalm 103 is the prayer of gratitude for God’s forgiveness, healing, redemption, covenant mercy and abundance.

Gratitude is the vessel for loving God, worship and prayer. In Luke 7 the woman with the alabaster flask  knelt before Jesus, anointed Him with oil, kissed and washed His feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. She offered Jesus what the Pharisee who had invited Jesus into his house did not – recognition and worship. Jesus knew the Pharisee’s secret condemnation of the woman and rebuked him for his callous heart. The sinful woman was forgiven much because she loved much. She was possibly the same woman Jesus had saved from stoning and if so, would not her gratitude to the Lord have been  boundless? It overflowed like her tears.

This Pharisee was called Simon the Leper. Obviously, he must have been healed of his disease. Physically, he was no longer unclean or he could not have been in public, let alone have guests in his house but Jesus revealed a deeper uncleanliness: condemnation, judgment, hostility, arrogance, hardness of heart. It was also ungratefulness. Perhaps Jesus had healed him, but Simon’s heart was of stone, not living flesh. It was not cleansed. Simon was like the nine lepers  in Luke  17 who did not return to Jesus after they were healed. Having been healed of his leprosy,  he   “showed himself to the priests” but was blind and ungrateful to the Healer sitting at table.  Instead , he was offended by the woman’s extravagant worship and by Jesus’  tolerance of her. He was forgiven little because of the plank in his own eye.

Without gratitude, the same plank  blinds us.  We lose sight of how desperately we need God’s forgiveness. Then like Simon the Leper, forgiven little, we love very little.

May God give us a heart  like an alabaster flask pouring out tears of gratitude!

My soul faints for your salvation. But I hope in your word. Psalm 119:81

Recently I was at my daughter’s house in Salt Lake. She, her husband and their two girls are voracious readers. Their bookshelves and tables overflow with books. Books are an eclectic part of their furnishings.

I’d  gone  to the basement for quiet time,  prayer and guidance from the Lord.  Standing  in front of a wall- filled book case, I glanced at the titles. Old and new volumes were crammed together in no particular order or genres: professional medical studies; folk lore collections; philosophy; psychology; science and science fiction; familiar old novels and children’s books; classics and a lot of fantasy literature. Some authors I recognized and many I did not. It was a bibliographical jumble as if I’d stumbled into a library’s back room. While I found books on religion and theology, there was no Bible.

I sat on the couch facing the line-up of great and not so great authors with my Bible  on my lap. It’s my travel Bible, a slim, thin- paged volume with no commentaries, having far less pages than a Tolkien or Shakespeare. However, in my hands lay a singular pearl of great price which Jesus talked about. The “words in red” revealing Jesus’ Gospel in the New Testament set into the foundation of the Old Testament are more precious than all the libraries of the world. I had God’s Word before me.  All the other numerous books in the basement library hold the words of humans.

Much of my life has been in pursuit of truth and meaning. I asked questions which all of us ask: Who am I? Why am I here? Am I alone on this planet or is there a God who walks alongside? What is the point of any of this? What is truth anyway?

The world’s  answers rarely satisfied me for  long. Neither art  nor science nor literature nor any of the humanities led me to truth or resolved the big questions. I had a great deal of head knowledge and a very confused, empty soul. The more I studied, the farther I got away from the Truth. I was like Pilate facing Jesus: truth was a rhetorical construct of the mind, impossible to grasp.

The greatest gift I ever received was a Bible from a friend. He told me the Bible is the living Word of God. “You will find it very odd but just read and God will speak to you through the Bible. Trust His Voice, “ he said. It wasn’t long before I heard that quiet Voice which has never stopped speaking if I stop to hear. It is a mystery.

God’s Voice in the Scriptures answer every question and provides all the guidance needed for the remainder of this journey. Thomas, always the skeptic, wanted Jesus to give him solid proof of His Word. Before the crucifixion, Thomas asks Jesus where He is going. How would he know the way?

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. John 14:6

I identify with Thomas a lot. Before being reborn in Christ Jesus, I didn’t know the way either. I followed whatever   path was in front of me, was without direction and got lost repeatedly. The Bible gives simple redirection to Jesus who is Truth and Life and the Way to the Father. Period. We are blind as Pilate when looking for  the “What” instead of “Who.” Truth is a person named Jesus, not Greek philosophy.

Philosophers are concerned with how to think about knowledge and existence. Thinking about human joy, pain and sorrow is far different than walking it out with one another. Searching for the “philosopher’s stone” is no more than an academic exercise.  No psychologist offers eternal hope. No scientist inspires us to be more than star molecules. Literature gives insights  but  literature also mirrors  evil  and darkness.  Human answers to eternal questions are impossible, like fireflies claiming the sun.

Thomas Aquinas was the brilliant author of the Summa Theologica.  As a Doctor of the Church, he tried to reconcile Greek philosophy with Christianity and is considered to be one of Christianity’s greatest theologians. One night in 1273 he completely stopped writing. When asked why, Thomas replied: “I can write no more. All that I have written seems like straw.” Thomas never wrote another word and his work was never finished. What is one to think of that? I think that Thomas realized even his theology about God was futile. No matter what he wrote, it would not suffice to understand or explain God. Ultimately, apart from the Holy Spirit , all our thoughts   end up in the hay barn.

 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Ecclesiastes 3:11

The Word of God is alive and limitless because the Holy Spirit breathes it into us. God reveals Himself through his own Word  Jesus,  and through Jesus alone.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. John 1:1

I am still an unabashed book worm.  But I don’t t need libraries filled with books to teach me any more  because I’ve found  the Truth.  In a  single psalm like Psalm 119  the Holy Spirit offers  everything I ever sought and everything still necessary: truth, light, understanding, wisdom, restraint from evil, unchanging divine principles, , eternal precepts, discernment, and instructions sweeter than honey.

Through Your precepts I get understanding; Therefore I hate every false way.  Your word is a l lamp to my feet and a light to my path.  Psalm 119:105-106

How vast is this library of One, the  opened up  Word of God!

Set your affection on things above not on things on the earth. Colossians 3:2 

There is something about January which makes me get into the “I need to clean out some of this stuff” mood. I took down the Christmas decorations earlier than usual and in the process of putting them away discovered a set of my mother’s dishes, still in the packing box on the shelf from four years ago. Or was it longer?

As I unpacked the china, I quickly realized that I had no room to store the dishes in my hutch (which is why I avoided the entire issue in the first place.) I already had four other sets crammed in there: our wedding china, one incomplete but precious set inherited from Dan’s grandmother and two more full sets of dishes. I could probably have dinner for 50 or more but as Dan says, no one does large sit down dinners any more. We eat our nuked meals on generic, plastic or paper plates (recycled of course). Bone china, silver and crystal set out on pretty tablecloths for dinners are archaic and excessive. They reflect social values which are disappearing even in my own life.

I freely admit I have too much stuff. Some of it is inherited from mothers and grandmothers. Most of it is the result of being married 53 years and having been richly blessed. Now I have to ask, what will happen to these treasures? My children have said No already. They have no room in their homes. They live casually. They don’t want to polish tarnished silver twice a year or hand wash fragile dishes. I can’t fault them for that.

The beginning of January is a good time to reflect on how much stuff – valuable or not- surrounds us. Of what lasting value is it really? Material possessions will possess us if we let them just like having too many sets of china I can’t give away! If we remember that earth is not our home it will be easier to be reasonable and balanced in material things. Jesus bought us with the price of His blood to have relationship with a lavish Father who provides us with all we need. We do not belong to this world any more and all our earthly treasures are as meaningless as dust.

Jesus warns about the temptations of possessions.

And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” Luke 22:15

Perhaps like me, you’ve packed far too much for the journey.  Enjoy and give thanks for what we are given  but then  rigorously pursue  a thorough January clearance  of  possessions which have taken over.  Clean out not only the “stuff” but the mind set which still needs more and more of the same. Invite the blessed,  unencumbered life of Christ to flow unhindered  within us as we travel onward as light as Light.

“Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always.  Remember the wonders he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced,…”  1 Chronicles 16:11-12

It’s the second day of January of 2017. I am watching the snow fall ever so gently and am trying to muster up the resolve to go for a walk. The cold air and exercise might clear out inertia clinging like cobwebs to my mind and body. I know what I should do. However, like the old standard song says, “Baby it’s cold outside” and the fireplace is ever so enticingly warm.

Two days into the new year and many of our well intended resolutions are already broken. Late December after a season of holiday overindulgence, we resolve to eat better, exercise our bodies regularly, spend less money next year, be kinder, gentler and generally grow up. The intentions are honorable but the follow through is…. Well, the intentions are honorable. I know myself too well to promise what I can’t possibly keep. I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions any more. I’m only  human.

Yesterday at church my husband talked about an incident which happened to him years ago. In his testimony he described how God spoke to his heart on a New Year’s Eve. Rather than making resolutions about tough choices he cannot keep, he asks the question, “What would Jesus do?” in any given situation. WWJD. That question is such a common place for many Christians it’s tempting to  be dismissive.  For Dan it was a mandate  from the Spirit.

Pastor confirmed Dan’s revelation and followed up with a Word for this year. It is quite simple. No new vision for our church. No tweaked  mission statement. No expansive ministry changes. Instead, he said our corporate and individual call for 2017 is to focus on Jesus. Focus on the only One who can change us, improve our circumstances and offer hope to this broken world. Keep our eyes on the Savior who showed the world the greatest love ever known. Kneel before the crucified King and repent. Look to the Lord with humility. Remember what He has done. Praise Him for   every blessing. Pray out of  gratitude. Focus on Jesus the Author and the completer of our faith. Resolutions are not the solution. Jesus is.

There are no new resolutions.   Look not for, but to Jesus instead. That is the most extraordinary, promising  and hopeful beginning to any new year.

O  come let us adore Him!

It is Christmas in just a few days. I am far from home visiting our daughter and family in Salt Lake for the holidays. One of the reasons for our coming was to attend Grand Parents’ Day at the girls’ school and to hear our  grand daughter sing in the cathedral choir this week. Earlier today they presented Benjamin Britton’s “Procession of the Carols” and  when the choir entered the church singing a capella I felt awestruck. The music was majestic and glorious. The huge cathedral rang and resounded with the harmonies of young voices blending together in a joyful chorus of adoration.

I am reminded again this year of Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth when

… suddenly there appeared with the angel a great multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying:…Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men on whom His favor rests. Luke 2:13-14

What appeared in the heavens at Jesus’ birth was vastly greater than a church choir. The Word says it was a “great multitude of the heavenly host.” One can only imagine what the sky looked and sounded like: countless voices filling the earth and the sky. A host of voices praising God and glorifying Him from the depths of the heavens for the Child who was  King of Angels. Luke’s simple description fires the heart and imagination. What indescribable, ethereal   music  must have been pouring over the baby Jesus from the skies.

Does that not give one pause to wonder who it is we come to adore at Christmas? The angels’ joyful voices could not be contained in the heavens. On earth simple shepherds were   awestruck and fell in worship. Magi came from far off to find Messiah, the prophesied King of the Jews, bringing gifts for royalty.

It was a baby born that night in Bethlehem but it was God Incarnate, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  It was the Sun of Righteousness with healing in His wings who will sit on the throne at the Father’s right hand. It is He to whom all authority in heaven and on earth has been given. It is the Lord Jesus who saves mankind from destruction and promises eternal Life. John says the small baby is the Word made flesh, the Light that came into the world and gives men life. He is Wonderful Counselor,  Prince of Peace, Almighty God. He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end of all things.

Sometimes we forget  the power and majesty of whom we adore. Christmas can easily become wrapped up in sentiments like a pretty package under the tree rather than a jaw dropping, knee buckling time, fire in the soul worship. Jesus ‘ birth was His entry into a dark world and the beginning of mankind’s redemption. His birth led to the violence of the cross and then to the glory of an empty grave. His birth concludes with victory over death and the grave ; it becomes  the gift of eternal life for all who believe in Him. The baby wrapped in swaddling clothes for whom the angels sang in Bethlehem is the Lamb on the Throne in Revelation, worshiped forever and ever by the same great multitude of the heavenly host, crying Holy, Holy, Holy. As will we.

Christmas is about this one thing: the beginning of all our adoration of Jesus.

Venite adoremus.  Venite adoremus. Dominum. O come let us adore Him. Christ the Lord.