Stark, not Sentimental
Theme of the Week: The Christmas-Card Cover-up
Monday, December 22, 2008
 1 of 1
Key Bible Verse: "He has taken princes from their thrones and exalted the lowly" (Luke 1:52). Bonus Reading: Luke 1:46-55
Contrary to what sentimental cards would have us believe, Christmas didn't simplify life on planet earth.
The cards depict a calm Mary receiving the tidings of the Annunciation as a kind of benediction. Luke tells a starker story. Mary's confusion and fright reluctantly turns to willingness to accept what God had determined.
Jesus is born far from home, with no midwife or extended family present. A male head of household would have sufficed for the Roman census; did Joseph drag his pregnant wife along to Bethlehem to spare her the ignominy of childbirth in her home village?
When the foreign astrologers, who dropped by with gifts for a royal heir, realized who he was, they engaged in civil disobedience. They protected the child by giving the powerful King Herod the slip.
I wonder what Mary thought about her militant hymn [the Magnificat] during her years of hiding in Egypt from her own government. For a Jew, Egypt evoked bright memories of a powerful God who'd flattened Pharaoh's army and brought liberation. Could her helpless, hunted baby possibly fulfill the lavish hopes of his people?
—Philip Yancey in The Jesus I Never Knew
My Response: The person I'd most like to join in my endeavor is ____.
Adapted from The Jesus I Never Knew (Zondervan, 1995) by permission.
Copyright © 2008 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
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This Christmas, God, let me see behind a Jesus sanitized and neutered over the years to your actual battle-scarred, dragon-slaying Son.
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