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Key Bible Verse: "I have seen the Savior you have given to all people. He is a light to reveal God to the nations" (Luke 2:30-32). Bonus Reading: Luke 2:22-35

In the birth stories, only one person seems to grasp the mysterious nature of what God has set in motion: the old man Simeon, recognized the baby as the Messiah, and instinctively understood that conflict would surely follow. "This child will be rejected by many in Israel, and it will be their undoing. But he will be the greatest joy to many others," he said, and then made the prediction that a sword would pierce Mary's own soul.

Somehow Simeon sensed that though on the surface little had changed—Roman troops were still stringing up patriots, Jerusalem still overflowed with beggars—underneath, everything had changed. A new force had arrived to undermine the world's powers.

The earliest events in Jesus' life give a menacing preview of the unlikely struggle now under way. Herod enforced Roman rule at the local level, and in an irony of history we know Herod's name mainly because of the massacre of the innocents. I've never seen a Christmas card depicting that state-sponsored act of terror, but it too was a part of Christ's coming.

—Philip Yancey in The Jesus I Never Knew

My Response: In what sense does dividing history into B.C.. (before Christ) and A.D. (year of our Lord) eras get it right?

Thought to Apply: We know the story, but we don't fully understand what it means. O God, we confess that we're still not ready for Christ's coming; we're reluctant to live as if the whole earth were your domain.           —Ruth Duck

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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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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