Dear Northside
One of my favourite Christmas Carols is Away in a manger. What’s your favourite Carol?
In the early days of the nineteenth century, the world was following, with fear and trembling, the march of Napoleon across Europe. Day after day they waited with impatience for the latest news of the wars. And no one was paying any attention to the babies that were being born. In just one year, lying midway between Trafalgar and Waterloo, there came into the world a host of heroes. During that year of 1809, listen to the people who were born in that year – when everybody was taken up with the problems of Napoleon: Gladstone was born in Liverpool, England; Alfred Tennyson was born in Somersby, England; Oliver Wendell Holmes was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Frederic Chopin was born in Warsaw, Poland; Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg, Germany; and Abraham Lincoln was born in Hodgenville, Kentucky. But nobody thought of babies. Everybody was thinking of battles.
Yet over two hundred years later, with a truer perspective which the years enable us to command, we can ask ourselves, “Which of the battles of 1809 were more important than the babies of 1809?”
At Christmas-time every year we celebrate the virgin-born baby, God in human form. He humbled Himself, He took the form of a servant, He was made in your likeness and mine, He identified Himself with the problems of the human race. And thus it was that the apostle John wrote,
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. – John 1:1-5
The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, as of the only begotten of the Father.) – John 1:14
What a difference the baby born in Bethlehem’s manger two thousand years ago makes to our world today. The educational systems He has inspired, the social reforms that His teachings have instituted, and the transformation of families and lives that have come about as a result of a baby born at Bethlehem!
The whole world was thinking of Caesar. The whole world was thinking of Rome. But in God’s eternal plan, He was thinking of a Baby in a manger in the little town of Bethlehem.
How can the story of Christ’s birth impact and transform your life and the way you live your life? Give your life to Him, if you have not already done so. Live as salt and light, making the world better and brighter. That baby drew up, lived a sinless life and then died as the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And He is coming back again soon. Are you ready?
Please continue to pray for our Christmas program. Praise God for the successful Project127 Camp and the Holiday Club.
Merry CHRISTmas, Pastor Gary