We have been doing a lot of reflecting around here lately. Every morning Adam reads an excerpt from
Good News of Great Joy by John Piper and then we read a chapter (which are pretty short) from
Come Thou Long Expected Jesus and it has been such a joy.
It has really began to reshape and mold my thinking about the advent season and Christmas. I have never
really meditated on the weight and glory of Christmas. I have never
really thought about just how magnificent the birth of Christ is, just how pertinent to the Gospel it is! That if Christ would not have been born, he would not have been able to live a sinless life and give of himself completely on the cross. Oh, how much more should we delight in Christmas because of this! This is the beginning-- the beginning of God's redeeming work on the cross. THIS is what mankind was waiting for! And now, because Jesus was born and because he lived the perfect, sinless life and because he died a horrific and brutal death and because he rose again, defeating sin, death and the devil, we are able to wait for him to return!
"
The whole of Christ's life was a continual passion; others die martyrs, but Christ was born a martyr. He found a Golgotha, where he was crucified, even in Bethlehem, where he was born; for to his tenderness then the straws were almost as sharp as the thorns after, and the manger as uneasy at first as the cross at last. His birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas Day and his Good Friday are but the evening and the morning of one and the same day. From the crèche to the cross is an inseparable line. Christmas only points forward to Good Friday and Easter. It can have no meaning apart from that, where the Son of God displayed his glory by his death. " John Donne
The Book of the Uncommon Prayers
