O Holy Night

O holy night, the stars are brightly shining. It is the night of our dear Savior's birth.

I love the artistic license we take in imagining Christ's birth - the sweet Christmas nativity displayed to us since childhood, complete with sleeping baby and lowing cattle. Most likely, it was a much dirtier and intense experience than our imagination cares to reflect on. Still, there is no doubt this was a truly holy night, marking the arrival of not just any child, but the only child ever sent as a suitable Savior to the world.

Was it a bright, starry night? We don't really know. It could have been cloudy and misting, for all the detail Luke's gospel gives us. But it certainly became a brightly shining night to a certain group of shepherds working the late shift in the hills of Bethlehem, when God's angels greeted them with news of the manger-dwelling Christ child. Within hours of His birth, those shepherds were proclaiming His arrival to the world... the first missionaries.

Long lay the world, in sin and error pining, til He appeared and the soul felt its worth.

Sin isn't new. It's not something we've managed to create or enforce through our current culture, despite what your political views might be. Satan has never needed to be creative. The sin we find ourselves languishing to today is the same sin introduced way back in the Garden of Eden - the belief that we somehow know better than God. Most sin stems from humanity wrestling for a place over divinity.

But then this child appears, miraculously born to a virgin teenaged girl and placed in a manger of all things, and suddenly humanity is invited in - not to share divinity with God, but sonship with the Heavenly Father. The "soul felt it's worth" because God isn't just about salvation. He is about relationship - and He desires, if you can believe it, a relationship with imperfect, languishing, prideful us. He chose to adopt us as His sons and daughters because in His eyes, we are worthy.

A thrill of hope. The weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

When we truly understand and embrace what God has done - when we truly accept the undeserved love and salvation He extends to us - can we be anything but thrilled? He is the hope that our weary souls long for, whether you're experiencing that hope for the first time, or you're being refreshed by it once again. We rejoice because it's Christmas morning, because our adopted Father invites us through His Son to cast the burdens we've been carrying - marriage, children, illness, disappointment, fear, and so much more - into His divine hands.

Fall on your knees! O hear the angel voices. O night divine. O night, when Christ was born.

Respond to His great love with worship, not because He demands it, and not because it's "part of the deal," but because your heart is overflowing with gratitude for what He's done. Fall on your knees or stand up and shout; sing a song of praise or whisper a prayer of thanksgiving. But whatever you do, join those Bethlehem angels in giving praise to a God who, on this most divine and most holy of nights, began the process for your salvation and mine by sending His Son to be that baby in the manger we celebrate this Christmas.


May you have a blessed and Merry Christmas,