Scripture References: Isaiah 6:1-5; Luke 2:8-14
Caring and Compassionate
Such a God gives us confidence for life. You know He is in charge of things. And when history is like a stream, overflowing its banks destructively, as ours is, we can be sure that God will assuage those angry waters, pulling them back into their channel, and that He will guide that stream to its appointed sea. This is God’s world and He will see that it fulfills the purpose for which He has created it.
Yet, God is not so high above us that He is out of touch with our earth. Isaiah heard God saying, “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool” (Isaiah 66:1). But God does more than touch earth with His feet. He is present redemptively in His world, and there is no nook or corner where He is absent.
After Moses’ encounter with God at the burning bush, God said to Moses, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians” (Exodus 3:7–8).
He is the God who comes down to show concern for poor, oppressed, and enslaved people. God comes down as a liberator and redeemer.
Christmas is about God who comes down to be with His people, to set them free and liberate them. The Child of Christmas would be called Immanuel “which means, God with us” (Matthew 1:23).
Never has heaven bent so near to earth, never has God stooped so low to our need as at Christmas. Never has earth lifted its paltry hands in such hope as at Christmas.
Peace and Justice
Heaven and earth! They are held together at Christmas. It is not only glory to God in the highest, it is peace among men of goodwill with whom God is well pleased.
Christmas will not let our faith be too ethereal, spiritual, and faraway. It keeps us fastened to our hard and mundane world. It talks about peace to men who often hate, fight, and kill. We are pugnacious people. There have been more years of war in our sordid history than years of peace. Almost every year has had a war raging somewhere in our world.
Yet, we never give up the dream of peace. Before the war is over we are making plans for peace. We dream of peace when there are no signs of it.
Isaiah lived through such a time when the shadow of the great Assyrian Empire lay across his little land. He could almost hear the marching of Assyrian armies in the distance. It was a time thoroughly inhospitable to peace. There were no signs of peace to be seen anywhere. Yet in this dark time, Isaiah dreamed of peace. “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore” (Isaiah 2:4).
To Be Continued
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 
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