“The existence of God is like the sun;  you cannot look at it but without it you cannot look at anything else.” 

                            G. K. Chesterton

Chalet L’Abri, Christmas, 2005 ---Measuring My Days…acg

          Arrives now once more the “heligh monat” or holy month, so named was December  -- the old Roman calendar having been divided into ten months and the proud Saxons having admitted this recognition of the Christ.  Up goes my lone decoration – an oversized wreath of green, red ribboned, and illuminated with tiny lights.  It symbolizes no beginning and no end;  He always was and He always will be. And I fill the bird feeders with sunflower seeds with a reminder that “His eye is on the sparrow” and me alike, a benediction deeply felt.

 So also, once more, the Christmas season!  “Time is the brush of God as He paints His masterpiece on the human heart;  Eternity is the perspective from which we can see the whole picture.” (Ravi Zacharias)  Too quickly this year passes into the history books and I find myself pondering ‘the brush of God.’ Thinking of God as the Master Artist with His brushes and seeing time from His perspective of all history;  history is after all, His Story!     Most surely our Lord must have dipped His brush in the color red when in the fulfillment of time, He watched as Jesus emerge onto the world scene that long ago night in Bethlehem. I am thinking, of course, of the Cross.  Christmas and Easter are inseparable;  likewise  the Incarnation and certain Resurrection.  In these meaning on the deepest level comes to those who have claimed Jesus as Lord.  So the color red dominates our world this season, even in lands where Christ is scarcely known or remembered.  

Finally, Christmas is about longing and meaning.  We long to know that there is something beyond three score years and ten.  Only Jesus can fulfill that longing; only He can infuse our life with meaning, no matter whatever else might consume our thoughts at Christmas time.  These essential truths may seem to some as commonplace, yet need to be merged in our souls, written large, in red letters, underlined, and announced as Good News – eclipsing all other stories and philosophies.  He truly reigns!

          On my bedside chest for reading these frigid nights is The Strong Name written by Scottish nobleman James Stewart.  He speaks of Christ with words that, like Jesus himself, reach out both powerfully and personally:
   "He was the meekest and lowliest of all the sons of men, yet He spoke of coming on the clouds of heaven with the glory of God. He was so austere that evil spirits and demons cried out in terror at His coming yet He was so genial and winsome and approachable that the children loved to play with Him and the little ones nestled in His arms. No one was half so kind or compassionate to sinners yet no one ever spoke such red-hot scorching words about sin… His whole life was love. Yet on one occasion He demanded of the Pharisees how they ever expected to escape the damnation of hell… He saved others but at the last, Himself He did not save. There is nothing in history like the union of contrasts which confront us in the Gospels…

 For all my readers:  Merry Christmas!