2 Cor. 1:3-7; Gal. 4:4-5, Christmas Meditations

There are some things that I have “come across” in recent days that were meaningful.  Perhaps you will find them helpful.

Christmas can be a hard time for some people.  Some struggle with loneliness.  Others have lost a loved one, perhaps at the “holiday time,” or perhaps during the last year, and they find it hard to share the joys of the season because of the grief.  We have lost a daughter and a grandson in the last 3 years, and I noticed that my wife left their stockings in a separate place in our living room, separate from the stockings for all the others in the family.  I’m not sure what else she should have done with them.  We think about them regularly, and I am sure they will be mentioned and missed at our family gathering.

We have a spiritual brother and sister who lost an adult son three years ago.  The sister has written several booklets as she has continued through the grief process. She is a wonderful writer. In their Christmas card she noted our recent losses and wrote something about her grief.  She said the first year was hard but you tried different things to soothe the pain.  The second year you tried some of the things that worked the first year.  The third year, you just come to realize it will always be there.  I appreciated what she said, as well as the fact that she said anything at all about our losses.  Not everyone needs to be “grief counselor” for us, but a few did and that is meaningful.

* * * * *

We have been reading an Advent book.  The daily readings come from Charles Spurgeon.  Today’s was based in Gal. 4:4-5, that Jesus was “born of a woman, born under the law.”  The first secures His true humanity which is essential for us.  There is no High Priest for us other than one that is taken from among us (Heb. 5:1-11).  Spurgeon also praised God that it did not say “born under a man and a woman.”  In some way not having a sinful man involved kept Jesus from bearing the sinful nature, making Him a Man like Adam was before he sinned. 

But what blessed me were Spurgeon’s reminders about the law.  Jesus was accountable to the law of God, and, as the record makes clear, He lived righteously in all things.  I was reminded of two passages.  Meditate on these!

³ For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴ that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Rom. 8:3-4)

⁴ For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. (Rom. 10:4)