Today is Christmas Eve. The big crescendo is about to reach it’s pinnacle. With great anticipation, children and many adults will fall asleep tonight wondering what the mystery and marvel of tomorrow will bring. What will it bring for you? Presents, fixed family relationships, good will, peace? As we end the Advent Season tonight with a candlelight service at Center Hill, the question will be asked, Why did Jesus come anyway? Why would the God of creation manifest Himself in the form of a human to live among us, when we, His creation, had so despicably rejected Him? Was it simply to spread good will and a general proclamation of peace on earth? Or an exhortation to give of ourselves to those in need or even to some how be kinder to our neighbor than our past records? If that is our understanding of the angelic host’s song to the shepherds, than we have missed the true gospel message in this Christmas season. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, to be a ransom for many. The proclamation that first Christmas night says “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased”! Don’t miss the gospel, the ‘good news’, of the angel’s voices for the well meaning quotes of today’s Christmas cards. Christ’s coming was only good news to those with whom God is pleased. The stark reality is that the very need for a ‘savior’ assumes the desperate plight of man. We are at war and not peace with God. He has provided a way of reconciliation though His son, Jesus. Those ‘with whom He is pleased’ are those who have by faith placed their trust and obedience in this Christ child and His finished work on Calvary’s cross, some three decades later. We at Center Hill, trust that you have understood the reason for His coming and not simply ‘the reason for the season’. May you say this year, that ‘peace is with me, for God is pleased with me’. God is only pleased with us when we have by faith, trusted and obeyed His son, for reconciliation. Merry Christmas and Peace with God! Soli Deo Gloria
