Grey

Here is something I read on Facebook.

Grey

by Kaeley Triller Harms

A few years back, I got into a playful argument with my brilliant best friend, the artist, when she insisted that, of all the stunning colors in God’s green earth, grey was her favorite.

“Grey??!” I repeated in bewildered incredulity. “Who picks grey when there’s cerulean and crimson or indigo to choose from?!”

Missing Jesus

Here is something I read on Facebook.

Missing Jesus

posted by Karen’s Country Kitchen

About a week before Christmas a family bought a new nativity scene. When they unpacked it they found 2 figures of the baby Jesus. “Someone must have packed this wrong,” the mother said, counting out the figures. “We have one Joseph, one Mary, three wise men, three shepherds, two lambs, a donkey, a cow, an angel and two babies. Oh, dear! I suppose some set down at the store is missing a baby Jesus because we have 2.”

Celebrating Christmas

Here is something I read on Facebook.

Celebrating Christmas

by Rachel Jankovic

🎄When women read their Bible faithfully and hungrily, our Christmas celebrations will get better and better. How do I know?

A hymn about the Second Coming

We sing Christmas carols to celebrate the birth of Jesus.  At Easter we sing songs about his resurrection.  Some time in the future Jesus will return to Earth as ruler and usher in a thousand years of peace and prosperity.  Isn’t that worth singing about too?  But it seems that there are very few songs about this subject.

Actually there is a very famous song that celebrates Christ’s return.  It is called Joy to the World.  But isn’t Joy to the World a Christmas carol?  It is usually sung during the Christmas season.  Perhaps we should examine it a little more closely.

Advent is for waiting

Here is something I read on Facebook.

Advent is for waiting

by Brian Zahnd

Advent is for waiting. As we tell the story of redemption through the church calendar we begin our telling of the sacred story, not with doing, not with celebrating, but with waiting — waiting for God to act.

Yet most of us — children of a high-tech, high-speed, instantaneous age — are not very good at waiting. It feels too much like doing nothing, and we are the driven ones who take pride in being busy. Waiting is not really our thing.

The Wise Men at the manger

Every year around Christmas we see nativity scenes.  The details of the scenes differ but all of them show the baby Jesus in a manger with Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, and the Wise Men either standing or kneeling around him.  These scenes serve a useful purpose by reminding everyone that Christmas is about Jesus, not Santa Claus.  Unfortunately every nativity scene I have ever seen promotes an error.  They show the Wise Men being present at the birth of Jesus.  In fact they were nowhere near Bethlehem then and didn’t arrive until much later.

Here is Matthew’s description of the birth of Jesus.

When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus. (Matthew 1:24-25)

He doesn’t give any details about the birth except to tell us that Mary was still a virgin.

Luke 2:1-20 gives a more detailed description of Jesus’s birth.  Joseph and Mary were forced to go to Bethlehem because of a decree by Caesar and Jesus was born there and placed in a manger.  An angel revealed to a group of shepherds that the Messiah had been born and they came to see him.

Luke and the Wise Men

Every year before Christmas we see many displays of the birth of Jesus.  The display normally consists of a baby in a manger with Joseph, Mary, some shepherds, and the Wise Men gathered around him.  The birth of Jesus was an important event in history and it is appropriate that we should remember it but our traditional picture of how it happened is inaccurate.  The Wise Men were not there.  They were probably  still in their home country and hadn’t even started their journey to Bethlehem.

Most of the elements in the traditional manger scene are taken from Luke’s gospel.  He tells us why Mary and Joseph had to travel to Bethlehem in the first place and that they had to lay Jesus in a manger because there was no room in the inn.  He describes the visit of the shepherds to see the baby.  But he never speaks of the Wise Men here or anyplace else.

Joy to the World

There are many lists of the most popular Christmas carols.  The lists differ from each other but Joy to the World can be found on almost all of them.

This hymn shouldn’t be on any of these lists because it isn’t about Christmas at all.   It is about the future return of Christ.