Christmas comes in a package covered in the Blood of Christ

Christmas comes in a package covered in the blood of Christ

It isn’t in a package to open Christmas morning and it is not something we wait until the season is ripe.  Christmas arrives silently within the heart of each one who has waited since birth without knowing its beauty.  We must go back to the prophets who spoke in language too remote to understand.  The words of peace and hope told of  a time when God would free them from the tyranny they knew and lived, yet it meant nothing to them except the few God spoke to.   

Isaiah spread a sign of hope and a promise to those who struggled not realizing the spiritual steps they lived would one day bring God’s Messiah to a future generation.  If only they could’ve had a crystal ball illuminating a day when there would be no more violence, hatred and wars, and the Messiah would stand welcoming them home.  See especially Is. 52: 13 - 53: 6, the fourth Suffering Song and Triumph of the Servant of the Lord.

Today as we celebrate a time of promise, a release from our sin, this Christmas promises that his birth in a wooden manger would become the very wood he would stretch out his arms on the cross eradicating our sin for ever.

Sometimes speaking like this when Christmas portrays  joy, bells and lights, and children dancing to angels and clowns and eager to open what Santa has brought them.  But, to each one the Incarnation leads all of us to Calvary, the crucifixion, and the blood which is shed for you and me. God’s Christmas gift is our forgiveness.

Ralph B. Hathaway