Christmas - The First Step to the Cross

 Things get more different every year with Christmas.  As sanctification goes on over the years, things don't change, but I do.  Christmas is less fanfare but more real each year. 

Christmas is the first step to the cross and the angels celebrated His coming.  Do you suppose the angels knew the "rest of the story"  when they announced the birth of the Christ child?

He came first to the marginalized: the shepherds, who were  "in the same country."  "We three kings came from a ways off and had to follow a star to get there. And didn't Jesus later say that  "The last shall be first and the first last?"  

And then there is the lowly carpenter stepfather Joseph who didn't want to put Mary away when she came up pregnant.  This same Joseph,  angels visited in dreams, and he believed and obeyed.  He must have been a pretty great guy to begin with because God chose him for this task.  He must have been close to God already because God kept talking to Joseph and eventually warned him to take the child to Egypt to escape Herod. And God told Joseph when to come back.  He was close to God's own heart and willing to obey.  Joseph went to "nevertheless not my will" before Jesus did in the garden.  

This Christmas I am grateful for Mary who accepted her calling, and for Joseph who accepted his.  But most of all praise God that "in the fulness of time sent Jesus to live a sinless life and die a criminal's death and be raised from the dead to save us who cannot save ourselves from the law of sin and death.  The song doesn't go:  "Christ the baby was born."   No, it goes "Christ the SAVIOR was born."   He came to "seek and save those that are lost."  That was me.  Praise God  I'm free because of what began that first  Christmas


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