Zephaniah 3:17  The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.

I love that image. God's delight in you is so overwhelming, that the Mighty Warrior finds himself singing for joy! His is a multifaceted emotional response that gets expressed in very physical ways. Notice that we are dealing with "great delight" in this context. As Justin Rossow puts it: "we're actually getting a Hebraic 'buy one, get one free' deal, where you double down on vocabulary words to express the strength of the concept."

This is a joyful delight so strong that even the Mighty Warrior has to jump up, spin around, and start singing!

That's what God thinks of you!
--
 

Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Matthew 1:1  The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

When most readers today see that the New Testament opens with a genealogy, they yawn. Not so for Matthew's original readers. This was an epic revelation. Jesus, son of Mary, is a direct descendant of David and Abraham. The patriarch, who promised a descendant through whom the entire world would be blessed; David, who was promised a son who would sit on his throne forever; Jesus is that descendent and that son. Every branch of the family tree of the old covenant has led to the baby in Mary's arms.

His birth proclaims the faithfulness of God. Many centuries before, he had made the promise. His people waited and waited. But they didn't wait forever. The Christ Child is the embodiment of all the Father's promises. He is the Yes to everything God wants us to have. In his tiny baby body, no more than a few pounds, is the immeasurable weight of the Lord's love for us.
--
 

Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Luke 1:35  And the angel answered her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy - the Son of God."

The Greek verb for "overshadow" also describes how the cloud of God's glory "overshadowed" the disciples at Jesus' transfiguration (Luke 9:34). When the Old Testament was translated into Greek, the same verb was used when the cloud of glory overshadowed or settled on the tabernacle (Numbers 9:15). Mary's womb will be like a temporary tabernacle. The "power of the Most High will overshadow" her as it filled God's sanctuary in days of old. Mary's bulging belly will be a short term Holy of holies in which God will grow.

The same Lord who used her body as a temple, makes our bodies his temple (1 Corinthians 6:19). He also puts us into his body, the church, as a living temple (Ephesians 2:21). Christmas is the celebration of God's union with humanity - a union deeper and more intimate than we can ever fathom.
--
 

Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Exodus 1:15-16  The the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, "When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live."

The Pharaoh, like all tyrants, feared any threat to his power. But he is fooled, because the shrewd midwives are blessed by God to save the newborn sons of Israel. And his evil, infanticidal decree becomes Egypt's own downfall as a baby named Moses floats down the Nile and is adopted by Pharaoh's daughter. This same Moses will later drown the Egyptian armies in the Red Sea.

When Jesus is born, another tyrant, Herod, will seek to kill our Lord, for he sees him as a threat to his power. And, as before, the Father will use this evil decree for the salvation of his people. He will send Jesus into Egypt to begin his ministry of restoring humanity. Unlike tyrants, Christ employs his unlimited power in loving sacrifice for humanity.
--
 

Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Genesis 16:8  And the angel of the Lord said, "Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?" She said, "I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai."

Hagar had good reason to run away. She didn't ask for her body to be forced into baby-making slavery by Darai and Abram. She seems to have been a bit uppity when she got pregnant, yes, but that was no cause for Sarai to treat her cruelly. So when the Lord's messenger asked Hagar, "Where are you going?" she admitted she was running away.

We might not like the fact that God sent her back - back to her sufferings - but sometimes that's where the Lord, in His wisdom, does guide us. Back under the cross. Back under responsibility. He sustained Hagar as he will sustain us. The Lord of mercy, who was once a weak and vulnerable baby, is ever near the weak and vulnerable now. In joy or suffering, he guides us by his mercy.
--
 

Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Romans 12:2  Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

"Friendship with the world is enmity with God," James says (4:4). As disciples of Christ and citizens of the kingdom of heaven, we commit treason when we conform to the world and adopt its ungodly ways. Such sinning will not increase God's grace but invite his rebuke and discipline. We have died and risen to new life in Christ. We walk in the liberated light of the Spirit, not the chains of death's darkness.

Having made us alive in Jesus, the Spirit is constantly renewing our minds, that we might think, speak and live, even now, as spiritually resurrected people who await a physical resurrection. His mercy daily transforms us. His love regenerates us. Jesus is emptying us of ourselves to fill us with more and more of himself, that we might be constantly renewed into the image of the children of God.
--
 

Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Psalm 27:11 Teach me your way, O Lord, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies.

Long before Christianity was called Christianity, it was referred to as The Way. For instance, if Saul "found any belonging to The Way, men or women," he would arrest them (Acts 9:2). This name is deeply rooted in the Old Testament, where the "way of the Lord" is frequently mentioned. A "way" is literally a road or path. To go the way of the Lord is to walk with Him, be led by Him. Faith, in this sense, is never static but always moving forward, alongside God, to a destination.

The Advent way is the way in which we walk with Him who, by His own confession, is "the way, and the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). He is in us, to our left, to our right, above us, beneath us, behind us, before us, as the Breastplate of St. Patrick puts it. Christ is our way. He is our beginning, our journey and our destination.
--
 

Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,