FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Scripture Reference: Luke 1:67-69, 78-79

Showing the Way to Peace – Continued

Christmas should have special meaning, especially for our generation. Peace should be our overriding concern, but we seem so helpless to achieve it. We can take hope, however, when we remember that Jesus came to bring us peace.

Christ gives us peace in three dimensions—peace with God, peace with our brothers and sisters, and peace within our own life.

Mankind is in rebellion against God who is the primary source of our existence. We had been separated from God and have cut ourselves off from the main source of life. Christ has come to reconcile us with God.

Mankind is set against his fellow who is the secondary spring of his life. Christ has come to reconcile him with one another.

Man is at war within himself. A battle is being fought in each and every life. We understand what Paul meant when he wrote: “For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do” (Romans 7:15). Christ has come to bring inner harmony and peace.

Jesus left His disciples a legacy of peace: “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27).

The Christ of the Andes is an impressive symbol of the Christ of peace. Once Chile and Argentina were enemies and fought. They decided at last that it was in the interest of both to live in peace. So, high upon their natural boundaries, the Andes Mountains, they built a great statue of Christ with this inscription: “Sooner shall these mountains crumble into dust when the Argentines and Chileans break the peace sworn at the feet of Christ the Redeemer.”

Christ calls us to be peacemakers. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9). Reconciliation and peacemaking should be our primary task.

We seem to be overwhelmed by the problems of peace in our time. However, this should not discourage us. We should be about our essential task right where we are. We can keep open communication, reach across barriers, give dignity and respect to every person, and show the love and acceptance of Christ. The little done by the many adds up, and when peace seems elusive and faraway we should remember that “the Dayspring from on high has visited us” in the darkness of our night to guide our feet in the way of peace. Nothing can ever put out that light, and it will shine until we come upon the perfect day in Christ Jesus!

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture Reference: Luke 1:67-69, 78-79

Showing the Way to Peace

In addition to giving light to us in our darkness, “the Dayspring from on high” has another purpose: “To guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Christmas has always been associated with our hope for peace, and it still is, but it is more than that. It is more the source of our peace than anything else.

The Bible is the most realistic and truthful literature in all the world and tells what it sees the way it is. It often shocks pious souls as it points to the unvarnished, unredeemed drives of power in people, their human (natural) nature. It tells how sadistic and preying people can be and reports strife, conflict, and war. Yet it always dreams of peace. Amid the rancorous, clamoring voices of strife there is heard a voice of peace. The Bible is bifocal and sees life as it is and also as it ought to be and someday will be. The Bible knows a secret: This is God’s world, and He sets the boundaries and shapes the ends of human history. Therefore things are going to come out right, although never willy-nilly and automatically. God calls us into the struggle of shaping the course and end of human destiny.

We understand why the Bible can hope for peace. In a war-torn world it dreams of peace among the nations: “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).

Knowing that peace does not come by impersonal forces, it foresees the Person of peace: “For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6).

The Bible is so bold as to dream of peace so all-pervading that even nature will lose its venom and hostility. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and lion shall live in peace. Even the small child need not fear to play over the hole of the asp. (See Isaiah 11:6-8).

Christmas broadcasts the theme of peace. But it does so much more. It is the fulfillment of the finest dreams for peace as well as a new beginning of peace, our best source of peace. A day has broken from beyond us, and its light has shone into our darkness to guide our feet into the way of peace. “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!” (Luke 2:14).

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture Reference: Luke 1:67-69, 78-79

Shining in Our Darkness

If Christmas is like the first light from heaven, where did it shine? It shone in the midst of “those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.” That light has shone in the night of our existence and has come to us who sit in darkness and walk in the shadow of death in this life.

What is the darkness in which we sit and the shadows in which we walk? They are the negatives of life: our doubts and senseless fears, our narrowness and prejudice, our hatred and lovelessness, our selfishness and self-centeredness, our stupidity and blindness, our ignorance and superstition, our falsehood and love of untruth, our sin and guilt, our rebellion and alienation, our sickness and death.

What is this light that shines into our darkness? If darkness is the negatives of our existence, then light is the positives: love, compassion, acceptance, truth, goodness, and life, the very Fruit of the Spirit that the Apostle Paul wrote about in Galatians 5:22-23.

Light is yes in a chorus of nays, affirmation in our denials, faith in our doubt, peace in our anxiety, hope in our despair, forgiveness in our guilt, reconciliation in our separation, vision in our blindness, acceptance in our rejection, healing in our sickness, and the abundant life everlasting in our death.

The positive has been accentuated at Christmas. The positive has come in clarity and fullness in Christ. The sun of heaven, who is the Son of God, has shone into the darkness where we sit and into the shadows where we walk.

Christmas reminds us of how amazingly strong the positive is. It is surprising how much darkness a little light can drive away. Only a flicker of light in the night is stronger than we can know. All the darkness of the universe cannot put it out.

A baby was born in the obscurest place of an obscure village. He was wrapped in swaddling clothes, the cheapest of garments, and laid in a manger, essentially a hay trough. He whimpered during the night as His mother kept a vigil over Him. We can imagine that to onlooking eyes, that situation looked so weak, helpless, and unpromising. Yet there was more power in that manger than in all the Roman legions. And it was that baby, not some Caesar, whose strength would not fail and who would one day be the Lord of human history, the Lord of all!

Arthur John Gossip wrote of the strength of goodness:

“In all this amazing world is there a more amazing thing than the invincibility of goodness? Everything seems against it. Yet it refuses to be killed. Often and often it is down, and all looks over. But somehow it always scrambles to its feet again and fights on. The tide ebbs out and out, and then it turns. The night falls and grows blacker; and then comes the dawn.” ¹

Where is that light that first shone at Christmas? When John wrote his Gospel, he said it was still shining in the darkness, and the darkness had not overcome it. Yet even today, it is still shining in the darkness of our modern world. We have the assurance from God’s promises that it will never go out and that it will continue to shine until all the forces of darkness have been routed and we come upon a city that has “no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light. . . . Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there)” (Revelation 21:23, 25).

To Be Continued

¹ Arthur J. Gossip, The Interpreter’s Bible, (New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1952)
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture Reference: Luke 1:67-69, 78-79

The birth of Jesus is spoken of as “the Dayspring from on high.” This is pure poetry. There is nothing more beautiful in the entire Bible. It is beauty throbbing with reality.

First Light

So Christmas can be spoken of as “the Dayspring from on high.”

“The Dayspring from on high has visited us to give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” A light from above has shown into the darkness of our night to give us peace.

Dayspring from on high. What do these beautiful words mean? The springs of day are on high. The dawn breaks from the heavens. The morning comes from eastern skies. The light comes from beyond us.

People do not cause the dawn. They can light a candle but not the eastern sky. They can light their houses, even their cities, but not their earth. They can break the chill of the early morning where they are, but they cannot lift the chilly, clammy mist from the mountains. They can build a fire by which to warm their hands, but they can’t warm their earth, nor thaw the freeze of winter, nor bring the spring.

Christmas is not about people lighting candles, nor framing their windows and doors with light, nor passing torches from hand to hand and from generation to generation. Christmas is not something done by people but something done for people. It is not our achieving but God’s doing.

Christmas is not essentially about our making gifts. Our generosity, however, at this season warms our own hearts as well as the heart of our world. It is about God’s love and generosity and that He so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to it.

If Christmas is like a dawn, it is little wonder that the motif of light is found in the Christmas stories.

In Matthew’s story the wise men followed the light of a strange star. “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him,” they asked upon their arriving in Jerusalem (Matthew 2:2). They followed the light from the heavens. “And behold, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was” (Matthew 2:9).

In Luke’s story the announcement of the birth of the Christ child was made to lowly shepherds about whom “the glory of the Lord shone around them” (Luke 2:9). You have seen this pictorially represented when the shepherds were dazzled and blinded by light.

John doesn’t tell a story about the birth of Jesus. He begins with the preexistent Christ and then rushes to tell a secret: “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shined in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it” (John 1:4-5).

Light is such an appropriate symbol for Christmas. Christmas, like light, makes possible a greater vision and gives warmth, life, and hope.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.