Mid-way to Christmas!

Six months from today is Christmas  - the happiest, most glorious time of the year!

I think I "Need a little Christmas now!"

Yes, right now!

I am putting on my Christmas music and singing loudly - and remembering that old wonderful Christmas carol, "What Child is this?"




Remember that 2nd verse:

 Why lies Him here in such mean estate

Where ox and ass are feeding

Good Christians fear:

For sinners, here, the silent Word is pleading.

I had two thoughts:

(1) the glorious fact of our rescue plan...

designed by God before the creation of the world...

described to mankind at the beginning of history...

reminded to mankind continually throughout history....

revealed to mankind in the incarnation of Jesus Christ the Word....

explained to mankind through the

written record of the New Testament...

and finally, totally, accomplished through the coronation of Jesus Christ as Lord of all.

Then "every knee shall bow and every tongue confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord." (Philippians 2)

When Mary laid Him there in that manger, when the shepherds came to worship, when Joseph stood by to protect Him, in that tiny Body God's grace was already being worked out.

(2) God loves to surprise us!

Think of it!  The Creator--God--King arriving in Bethlehem of Judea in a stable! Who would ever make up a story like that!

And then in the last days John sees the throne of God and the elders call, "Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed."

And what does he see: "Then I saw a Lamb, looking as it it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne" (Revelation 5).

Not a fearful mighty Lion, but a wounded Lamb....the Lamb that was slain from the beginning of the world (Revelation 13).

God's amazing rescue plan -- wrapped in a surprise package -- and so we can now begin to glorify God and enjoy Him forever!

May the awe and wonder of Christmas astonish us every day!

Charles Spurgeon - The Winter in My Soul - Even in June

You have made summer and winter.

Psalm 74:17

My soul, begin this wintry month with God.

The cold snows and the piercing winds all remind you that He keeps His covenant with day and night and serve to assure you that He will also keep that glorious covenant that He has made with you in the person of Christ Jesus.

He who is true to His Word  in the revolutions of the seasons of this poor sin-polluted world will not prove unfaithful in His dealings with His own well-beloved Son.

Winter in the soul is be no means a comfortable season, and if it is upon you just now, it will be very painful to you: but there is this comfort, namely, that the Lord makes it.

He sends the sharp blast of adversity to nip the buds of expectation. He scatters the frozen dew like ashes over the once fresh green meadows of our joy.

He dispenses His icy morsels, freezing the streams of our delight.

He does it all; He is the great Winter King and rules in the realms of frost, and therefore you cannot murmur.

Losses, crosses, heaviness, sickness, poverty, and a thousand other ills are of the Lord's sending and come to us with wise design.

Frosts kill harmful insects and restrain raging diseases; they break up the clods and sweeten the soul.

O that such results would always follow our winters of affliction!

How we prize the fire just now!  How pleasant is its cheerful glow!

Let us in the same manner prize our Lord, who is the constant source of warmth and comfort in every time of trouble.

Let us draw near to Him, and in Him find joy and peace in believing.

Let us wrap ourselves in the warm garments of His promises, and keep working, unlike the lazy man who refuses to plow because it is too cold; in the summer he will have nothing and will be forced to beg for breed.


---- From Morning and Evening, by Charles Spurgeon

We Reap What We Sow

Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need;
The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree
I planted -- they have torn me, -- and I bleed.
I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.

-- From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, by Lord Byron


And from the New Testament....

Don't be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person
plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others --ignoring God! --harvests a  crop of weeds. All he'll have a show for his life is weeds! But the one plants in response to God, letting God's Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real, eternal life.
Galatians 6:7 (MSG)

Feeding The World

                                        How To Feed the World   

          Luke 9  --  Great crowds were following Jesus. Late one afternoon the disciples came to Him and said He should send the crowd away so they could go somewhere and find food.

           He replied, "You give them something to eat."

           What a command! He wanted them to feed the crowd!

            As I look around today I see a hungry crowd everywhere I look. I think He's telling us to feed them!

           Gloria Gaither wrote a beautiful song about that. She titled it "I Then Shall Live" and sings it to Sibelius' composition "Finlandia." These are my favorite passages when I think about that event recorded in Luke 9:

I then shall live as one who's been forgiven

I'll walk with joy to know my debts are paid

I know my name is clear before my Father

I am His child and I am not afraid.

So greatly pardoned, I'll forgive my brother

The law of love I gladly will obey.

Your Kingdom come around and through and in me

Your Power and Glory, let them shine through me.

Your hallowed Name, O may I bear with honor

And may Your living Kingdom come in me.

The bread of life, O may I share with honor, 

And may You feed a hungry world through me."

Let's go out and feed our hungry world today!

    

       

Whose Work is More Spiritual? C S Lewis

                                           

                                                Whose Work Is More Spiritual?

Is your work more spiritual than mine? Is a musician's performance more pleasing to God than a ditch digger's labor?

Thoughts from C S Lewis:

"I reject at once an idea which lingers in the mind of some modern people that cultural activities are in their own right more spiritual -- as though scholars and poets were intrinsically more pleasing to God than scaverners and bootblacks...this is a dangerous and anti-Christian error. Let us clear it forever from our minds.

The work of a Beethoven and the work of a charwoman become spiritual in precisely the same condition: that of being offered to God, as being done humbly 'as to the Lord.'

This does not mean, of course, that it is a mere toss-up whether he should sweep floors or compose symphonies.

A mole must dig to the honor of God and a cock must crow. We are members of one body, but differentiated members, each with his own vocation."

     "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men...It is the Lord Christ you are serving."   (Colossians 3:23)

Memo from God

 

My child,

Don't worry so much about the world. 

Just love everyone.

I'll sort it all out later.

I promise.

Your Father