CHANGING PLACES
The stunning point of Christmas is that God considered my needs and the worth of my relationship to Him to be sufficient cause to go through the trauma of changing places.
-Joseph M. Stowell in
“Moody Monthly” (Dec. 1992)
A STUPENDOUS AND ASTONISHING WONDER
Christmas for millions is just “the holiday season.” Are we losing the sense of marvel at the Christmas miracle? Why, this is the most stupendous and astonishing wonder which could ever engross the human mind – that the eternal, infinite Creator of the universe should enter our human life, and assume our human nature, by being born as a baby of a human mother!
-J. Sidlow Baxter in
“Awake, My Heart”
THE PERFECT GIFT
Who can add to Christmas? The perfect motive is that God so loved the world. The perfect gift is that He gave His only Son. The only requirement is to believe in Him. The reward of faith is that you shall have everlasting life.
-Corrie ten Boom in
“Each New Day”
NEEDED GENEROSITY
If the result of commercialism is no worse than to make a husband give a gift to his wife, and a father a gift to his child, and to enable us all to be extravagantly generous for once, then there could be much worse things.
-William Barclay in
Daily Celebration
HUMBLING THE GLORIFIED ONE
Jesus, the Christ, is the Eternal One, for in the fullness of time He humbled Himself. John’s description is plain: the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.
I confess I would have liked to have seen the baby Jesus. But the glorified Jesus yonder at the right hand of the Majesty on high, was the baby Jesus once cradled in the manger straw. Taking a body of humiliation, He was still the Creator who made the wood of that manger, [and] made the straw.
-A. W. Tozer in
“Renewed Day by Day”
GOODNESS THAT LASTS
A little girl said she liked Santa Claus better than Jesus because “you have to be good for Santa only at Christmas but for Jesus you have to be good all the time.” Much of the Christmas observance at church is not far removed from that attitude.
-Vance Havner in
“The Vance Havner Quotebook”
GOD’S SAVING HUMILITY
Christmas demands faith, because Christmas is a mystery. Our reason cannot succeed in trying to understand how God could possibly have loved us to such a degree. The shepherds are given a sign. They will find him in a manger. There the infant Jesus has been placed … a sign of extreme poverty and of God’s supreme humility. Such a thing baffles the intellect. It teaches us that to welcome the message of Christ, the divine Redeemer, reason must be laid aside. Only humility, which melts into trust and adoration, can comprehend and welcome God’s saving humility.
-Pope John Paul II in
“Draw Near to God”
INCARNATION’S MEANING
The Son of God became man to enable men to become the sons of God.
-C. S. Lewis in
Mere Christianity
FROM THE BOTTOM UPWARDS
The true Christian religion … does not begin at the top, as all other religions do; it begins at the bottom. You must run directly to the manger and the mother’s womb, embrace this Infant and Virgin’s Child in your arms, and look at Him – born, being nursed, growing up, going about in human society, teaching, dying, rising again, ascending above all the heavens, and having authority over all things.
-Martin Luther in
“Lectures on Galatians”
NO PEACE WITHOUT THE BABE
Our trouble is we want the peace without the Prince.
-Addison Leitch
(CT, Dec. 22, 1972)
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