A Christmas "What-if"

I am including here a sermon/devotion that I shared for our Christmas Eve service. It asks, and gives a potential answer to the question of the shepherds the night Jesus was born.

Have you ever considered that the largest display of angels demonstrated in preparation for Jesus' birth was to a group of shepherds?

Here is the devotion with some added notes...


I hope you are open for an abnormal Christmas Eve devotion. Because I think we need some abnormal.

If you don't care for it, it is on me and please understand, I did not ask anyone ahead of time for permission.

If you do appreciate the thoughts this evening, then give the credit to God, and The staff here because they asked me to share it.

I am challenging you to change your Christmas greeting. "Merry Christmas" is really a shortened version of "Have a Merry Christmas" and Happy Holidays doesn't really count.

I challenge you to change it. It is kind of like when someone says how are you? Next time that happens, stop and actually tell them, and see what happens. It will freak them out.
This year try, "have an abnormal Christmas." And see what happens.

We have become too comfortable with a story that many of us have heard all our lives and picture in our minds from Christmas plays, cartoon specials, and Christmas songs.
This thought came to mind when my oldest son, back from college, asked when we were going to have a "normal" Christmas and we started to question what is normal. You see Christmas has become about what media and the songs tell us. This is not a “rant” on what Christmas has become; it is a challenge to our view of it all.

This Christmas we are getting set to pack-up our house, last Christmas I was in Afghanistan, the Christmas before that we were at Walter Reed delivering Christmas cards, the Christmas before that we were in Boise, ID with me getting set to head to South Carolina.
But the Christmas songs would have you believe that Christmas is about family coming together, eating far too much food, and one even suggests telling “scary ghost-stories.” I’m not sure about that one.

I’m not against family coming together of course,…

But it is only in the classic Christmas CAROLEs that we are reminded of Christ, and the gift He is, and the gift He desires.

When I was growing up we still did Christmas plays in public school. We watched a Charlie Brown Christmas every year, and you can almost picture the setting with all of the players and surroundings. But in the midst of all of it, I wonder if we have missed something.

Have you ever wondered about the shepherds in the story.

I would like for us to look at a little bit of history, and ask a “what-if”.

We may be missing a little bit of the story. There is significance to the presence of the angels, and why they came in mass to the shepherds.

--Appearances of the angels concerning the birth of Christ.
JOSEPH: Matt 1:18 -- The birth of Jesus Christ came about this way: After His mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, it was discovered before they came together that she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit. 19 So her husband Joseph, being a righteous man, and not wanting to disgrace her publicly, decided to divorce her secretly.
    20 But after he had considered these things, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son of David, don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because what has been conceived in her is by the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to name Him Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins."
ZECHARIAH: Luke 1:8 -- When his division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, 9 it happened that he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and burn incense. 10 At the hour of incense the whole assembly of the people was praying outside. 11 An angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing to the right of the altar of incense. 12 When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and overcome with fear.
MARY: Luke 1:26 -- In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27 to a virgin engaged to a man named Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary.
SHEPHERDS: Luke 2:8 -- In the same region, shepherds were staying out in the fields and keeping watch at night over their flock. 9 Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.  10 But the angel said to them, "Don't be afraid, for look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people: 11today a Savior, who is Messiah the Lord, was born for you in the city of David. 12 This will be the sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped snugly in cloth and lying in a manger."
    13 Suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying: 14 Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to people He favors!
    15 When the angels had left them and returned to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go straight to Bethlehem and see what has happened, which the Lord has made known to us."

Why the shepherds?

As is highlighted here, http://www.jesus.org/birth-of-jesus/shepherds-and-angels/why-did-the-angels-announce-jesuss-birth-to-shepherds.html these were very likely not your ordinary shepherds. According to other research that has been done, these were possibly shepherds who were tending to the temple flocks. This would be the sheep who were intended for the temple sacrifices. When the angel encourages these men to go and see the Child, he in essence is encouraging them to go and inspect the Lamb of God in the same way that they are tasked with inspecting the lambs for sacrifice.

It was a VERY ABNORMAL NIGHT. The message of the angels concluded with the clear message that this is a gift of God to those He favors. His favor rests on those who have given themselves to Christ, and accepted that gift.

Christ is truly the Lamb whose sacrifice covers our sins forever, if we know Him. Do not let Him stay as a baby in a manger. Recognize Him as the Savior and Lord of all. Do you know Him truly?

The True Hope of Christmas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7670CXvPX0

It is a beautiful song with even greater strength when we understand the story behind it.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the poem that became this song on Christmas day of 1864.  The end of the Civil War was still several months away.  His oldest son had been injured in battle, and his wife had died just three years prior.

Many of us would struggle with finding praise for God with those issues around us—death, injury and war.  And yet Longfellow finds hope in God.

The verse that he is referring to is from the King James Version of Luke 2 where we read, “¹³And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, ¹⁴Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

Although we may desire peace on earth, according to W. J. Durant, from 3421 years of documented history, there are only 268 years without war.  This would also demonstrate that there is generally no “good will” between men.

However, it is possible that there was a different point that the angels were making.

A more accurate translation is found in the Holman Christian Standard Bible, “Suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying:  ¹⁴ Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to people He favors!”

The context of this statement comes from the angels announcing that God has chosen again to remind us of His presence in our lives and our world.  The announcement is to say that God is still in control.

Can a man who has dealt with so much pain sing praises to God again?  Can a Soldier who struggles with present and past battles sing those same praises?

Longfellow was eventually able to say, “Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: ‘God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!  The wrong shall fail; the Right prevail, with peace on earth, good-will to men!’”

Our Soldiers can know peace on earth as well.  Maybe not free from physical battle, but we can know peace from the inner battles.  When we trust God with every aspect of who we are, then we will know peace.

We know God’s favor because of the gift of His Son.  Our sound, solid relationship with Christ is the demonstration of God’s favor. 

A Soldier understands the concept of Lordship.  Everyone wants a Savior; but submitting to Lordship is a different challenge.  The Soldier though knows that they cannot control every aspect of an operation.  They must trust those they work with and the orders that they are given.  They must trust that those over them are competent in the design of their plan.  We can all trust that the Designer has a design and plan, and we can leave all of it in His hands.

If we all seek to trust in Christ at the deepest levels of our lives, then we can know peace on earth.  It will be a peace, based on a trust, which rests with our Savior, who was born as a child, announced by angels, and is Lord of all.

Merry Christmas

Testing Out New Technologies

There are some benefits to being in a very rural part of the world. By this I do not mean rural America. I mean rural Afghanistan.
For one thing we did not have to deal with TV commercials. In fact, for the most part, the only time I enjoy commercials is when they are interrupted by the Super Bowl, or on a show that is highlighting the best commercials from around the world. Curiously, I ended up being home on R&R leave for the Super Bowl this year.
However, there is one key negative to being in a very remote corner of the world; we were somewhat out of the loop for news, and especially technology news.  As an example, the "tablet" craze got started just before we left. I can think of only one Soldier who was with us who had an IPad. Many of the phones that we have today were not even on the radar. So I share this to let you know that this is the first blog posting that I am attempting to do from my phone. I hope it goes well. Keeping up (or catching up) with all the technology changes has been a challenge, even if it has been nerdy fun.

New Adventure Possibly Ahead

So I realize that it has been quite a while since I posted anything.

This would of course be due to the fact that I was deployed to Afghanistan for a year, and I did not have access to this page very often.

However, we are now back and I have been given a "heads-up" about the next adventure to come our way.

My family and I have been told that we should expect orders in January for us to report to Camp Casey, South Korea. We are very excited.

Although Korea is a long ways from here, it will be an awesome opportunity for us to experience a different culture, and see the world from a different angle.

What I would like to do with this and upcoming posts, is to relate some of what we are experiencing as this process goes proceeds. Who knows, maybe it can help someone else. Maybe one day you will be moving overseas, maybe even to South Korea.

For now, let me put this out there--you probably have more stuff than you really need. We are learning that quickly as we start thinking about what we are, and are not going to take with us.

Hope to post soon.