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Key Bible Verse: I decided to concentrate only on Jesus Christ and his death on the cross (1 Corinthians 2:2). Bonus Reading: Luke 1:68-79

Mary heard the angel out, pondered the repercussions, and replied, "I am the Lord's servant, and I am willing to accept whatever he wants." Often a work of God comes with two edges, great joy and great pain, and in that matter-of-fact response, Mary embraced both, accepting Jesus on his own terms, regardless of the personal cost.

When the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci went to China in the sixteenth century, he brought along samples of religious art to illustrate the Christian story for people who had never heard it. The Chinese readily adopted portraits of the Virgin Mary holding her child, but when he produced paintings of the crucifixion and tried to explain that the God-child had grown up only to be executed, the audience reacted with revulsion and horror. They much preferred the Virgin and insisted on worshiping her rather than the crucified God.

As I thumb once more through my stack of Christmas cards, I realize that we in Christian countries do much the same thing. We observe a mellow, domesticated holiday purged of any hint of scandal. Above all, we purge from it any reminder of how the story that began in Bethlehem turned out at Skull Hill.

—Philip Yancey in The Jesus I Never Knew

My Response: How could the way I celebrate Christmas better accept Jesus on his own terms?

Thought to Apply: Bethlehem and Golgotha, the birth and death, must always be seen together.  —J. Sidlow Baxter

Adapted from The Jesus I Never Knew (Zondervan, 1995) by permission.

Copyright © 2008 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

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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