Christmas
is a fascinating time of year. Think about how it was in Galilee and Judea
during
the days of Herod the “butcher King” and Caesar Augustus, who proclaimed
a census to take place over the Roman Empire.
A
young girl who is barely child-bearing age is promised to her legal husband.
Yet, due to customs Joseph is not permitted to have an intimate relationship we
call “having sex”, because of a time-frame necessary to prove himself to the
family of Mary and probably Mary, herself.
Mary
appears to be in a direct line of impressive forebears as well as Joseph. The
messiah, the anointed one with the anointing of God, was prophetically promised
to be in the line of the great King David. Surely this would be no problem
since Joseph was in the direct line of King David. Yet, the circumstances of
the birth of Jesus, the long sought messiah of Israel, were otherwise.
Joseph
was a God-honoring man and seemed to have a heart open to the things of God. He
appeared to have a heart of mercy. When he found that his betrothed wife was
pregnant, he surely was brokenhearted at first, yet did not want to see his
seemingly “unfaithful” wife stoned. So, he devised a plan to quietly divorce
her.
The
girl, Mary, had encountered Gabriel, an archangel of God, who told her she was
going to have a son who would deliver his people and be the redeemer of
mankind. There are enough verified instances of angels even in our modern day
experiences to no longer doubt the scripture about the veracity of angels. They
are God’s messengers.
The
interesting thing is that Mary readily accepted the angel’s pronouncement and
tells him she is honored to be the Lord’s handmaiden. She probably didn’t
understand all he meant when he told her she would conceive not through Joseph
or any other man, but that the Spirit of God would impregnate her. However it
is not hard for us to believe that she knew the moment it happened.
She
follows the lead of the angel and goes into the hill country to check if he was
correct that her aging cousin, Elizabeth, was already in her sixth month of
pregnancy with the one who would become John, the baptizer. Perhaps Mary wanted
to make sure she wasn’t going crazy. Sometimes we can believe something for the
moment and question it in the distance of time.
As
it turns out, the moment she crosses Elizabeth’s threshold the child in
Elizabeth’s womb leaped for joy in the presence of the seed of God in Mary’s
womb. Elizabeth gives her famous and awesome prophetic word concerning Jesus.
Mary magnifies the Lord and her spirit rejoices in God her Savior.
She
truly seemed to understand that she was the one who would be called blessed,
because she, even in her lowly state, was to become the mother of the Messiah,
who would have all the DNA necessary for a man, except the necessary
chromosomes signifying a human father. Instead, he would be born of a virgin by
the supernatural touch of our Loving Heavenly Father. The one to be born would
be Emanuel, God with us, Redeemer of Mankind.
When
you celebrate Christmas or even Hanukah this year, realize that you are
celebrating the true Light of the world. The One who’s light never goes out.
The one who promises that the darkness which seems at time overwhelming at all
its levels of evil intent will never put out the light. The factor of light is
that in it there is an absence of the “dark side”.
The
Light of the world is still Jesus, the Creator who became a child with the
blood of the Loving Heavenly Father; who came to die for the entire world’s
sinful iniquity and to redeem mankind and make a covenant as a man with God
Almighty in our behalf. Then he died and rose from the dead, conquering death
itself.
That’s
the God/man no longer a babe in a manger we celebrate on the fascinating day of
Christmas.
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