When I was a kid, I remember driving around the small town I grew up in this time of year, looking out the window of my mom's car and seeing what are called "Nativity Scenes" set up on the front lawns of churches and private homes. This is, of course, the romanticized sculpture that tries to represent the birth of Jesus at His First Advent. The Christmas season is supposed to be a celebration of the birth of Jesus, and although most scholars agree that it's VERY unlikely He was born on December 25h, or even in the month of December, this traditional date is a good time to celebrate the fact that God sent His Son into the world.
Personally, I don't have any energy left to argue with people who want to be down on Christmas, or Nativity Scenes, or egg nog, or candy canes, or even Christmas trees. Your expressions of contempt for these things and the people who indulge in them DOES NOT score you any points with God and in my humble opinion, you're actually grieving Him by doing that.
All of that having been said, I do have a comment about Nativity Scenes and it goes like this.
A lot of people seem to really like "baby Jesus" and are comfortable with Him as a baby, but then a few days after ostensibly celebrating His birthday, they go out and drink too much alcohol to celebrate the new year. Sometimes, people drive past still standing Nativity Scenes to get to the new year's eve parties they're going to.
This, obviously, is a mistake but it's just one of many mistakes we make as human beings. We love "baby Jesus" but we don't much like the man He grew up to be and we often forget to follow the teachings He gave us when He grew up. That's partly because most of us rarely open up a Bible to read about His teachings and His ministry.
So, gentle reader, whether you celebrated His birth a few days ago or not, I hope you will join me in making a resolution to more faithfully serve and follow Him in the new year 2025. A great way to help ourselves do this is by spending time in daily Bible study, and the best way I've found to do that is by using the One Year Bible app, or if you're old-fashioned like me, maybe you even have a physical paper copy of the One Year Bible in your home.
It has been a great blessing to my own life to be a "One Year Bible" person, and I hope someone reading this will take advantage of the blessing that daily Bible reading can be to your life as well. It's a great time to start this habit, and if you don't keep any of your other new year's resolutions, reading the Bible every day will surely be one you'll want to keep.
The Lord be with all of us in this new year that's coming.
No comments:
Post a Comment