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I really enjoy Christmas \u2013 the decorations and lights, food, gift giving, and catching up with family and friends.<\/p>\n
But Christmas time also leads me back to the start of the bible, when God called Abram (later Abraham) to leave his country, his people, family and friends, and his father\u2019s household idols, and be led to a life in a new land, with the promise he would become the father of a new people, and be a blessing to all peoples.<\/p>\n
The idolatry that Abraham was called to leave seems to have devolved from the original worship of God passed down from Noah. \u00a0But over time, people turned their focus away from God and onto his visible gifts of light \u2013 the stars, the sun and the moon.
Those symbols of God\u2019s light became their objects of worship; it was like being spiritually short-sighted.
And around us now we can see spiritual short-sightedness too, as many people focus on the good things about Christmas, but want them without God.<\/p>\n
People can be misled into thinking that good health, harmony, happiness, loved ones and material comfort are everyone\u2019s right for this season.
But real life is not like that.\u00a0 We still face hardships and sorrow, pain and illness.\u00a0 And if people think their own good time has priority, they\u2019re at cross purposes and in conflict.
Without Christ at the centre of Christmas, this tends to be a time of disappointment, stress and strife, and it\u2019s an extremely busy time for social workers and psychiatrists.<\/p>\n
Those wise men from the east who came searching for Jesus with their knowledge of the stars, were likely called from the same idolatry as Abraham.\u00a0 Their worship of Jesus confirmed that the purpose for which Abraham was called had been fulfilled in Jesus, and through Him all peoples would be blessed.<\/p>\n
Just like Abraham and the wise men we too are called \u2013 to look beyond self, material comfort and the other idols of our time.
We are called to a journey through this life with a promise of God\u2019s truly perfect gift \u2013 of new life in Jesus.<\/p>\n
Here at our Lord\u2019s table, we celebrate Christ\u2019s gift of forgiveness, given with a love deeper than we can fathom.
For in Jesus\u2019 victory on the cross, He took the penalty of death for our sin, upon himself, that we may be declared righteous and reconciled to God.
And by his resurrection we are freed from the power of death, to live the new and never-ending life he freely gives as we place our faith in him.<\/p>\n
As we know Jesus as our personal saviour, we can enjoy these Christmas traditions whatever our circumstances.
True peace, harmony and love, are blessings we receive when we are reconciled to God through Jesus.<\/p>\n
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I really enjoy Christmas \u2013 the decorations and lights, food, gift giving, and catching up with family and friends. But Christmas time also leads me back to the start of the bible, when God called Abram (later Abraham) to leave his country, his people, family and friends, and his father\u2019s household idols, and be led […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26807"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26810,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26807\/revisions\/26810"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}