See the lights shining bright, the streets and alleys beautiful with ornaments that spell C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S. For some and maybe for you it is the favorite time of year again when friends and loved ones show how much they care by crowding the bottom of Christmas trees with gifts of different kinds. Most offices are closed for the holiday as each one revels in the majesty of the season. Those who have not been to church all year make it a point to be in church at least once this season for reasons best known to them. Communities hold event after event to commemorate the birth of Jesus. God Himself has come to be with us through the manger in which He lay as a baby.
I don’t know what this means to you as a person but I know that the manger is only occupied by the Savior of the world when viewed through the eyes of the cross He came to bear. Without the cross, the manger is occupied by Mary’s baby and not the Savior of the world. Max Lucado put it right when he said “History’s main event is the cross of Jesus” Take away the cross, therefore, and there is no Christmas. This means the same thing for us as it did for Mary and Joseph as they watched their baby remembering clearly the words of the angels “He shall save His people from their sins”
Thus the proclamations of glory to God in the highest rang out from shepherd and angel alike; from sheep and human for the Savior of the world had been born. But Mary treasured all these things in her heart and pondered them. Unlike Mary, we have in our celebrations of the coming of the savior failed to ponder “these things” in our hearts for if we did we will realize that “if there is no cross in my Christmas, then my Christmas has lost the Christ – what is the manger if it is not for the Messiah, the one who saves us with the scars?” Ann Voskamp
Like Peter we make our declarations about Jesus “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God” expecting the kingly manifestations of his power in our lives and our different situations and there is nothing wrong with that. But is there a possibility that we have the right declarations but yet the wrong expectations? Peter’s expectations of Jesus earn Him the most dreaded “get thee behind me satan” in the verse that follows. Why? Pause and think about it. Why would Jesus rebuke Peter that sharply? Wasn’t He being too hard on Peter? Well maybe and maybe not.
“The nifty things we have in mind for Jesus to help us with when our backs are against the wall to us might be the solution but to Jesus they might just be the short cut with the devil lurking in the shadows” Joe Stowell. Aren’t you glad Jesus didn’t settle for the shortcuts offered by the devil both in the wilderness and through Peter in this account? In bearing the cross, Jesus went for the source of our enslavement and not just for the symptoms. He is still doing the same in the crosses we bear today so let go of the disappointments and the wrong expectations behind your declarations of Jesus as Messiah. Trust Him to bring ultimate victory to that situation you are trusting Him to resolve this Christmas and thereafter.
Cross implies pain. No pain, no gain. The greater the pain, the greater the gain. How I wish I could skip the pain every time. You probably wish that too but don’t let the bright lights and beautiful ornaments distract you from the path that leads to the cross. Only those who bear the cross diligently will experience the victory that results FROM it. Notice clearly that the victory results from the cross born diligently. The question is not whether we are bearing a cross but how we choose to bear it. Victory results from bearing it diligently, like Jesus did.
AAARRRGGGGHHH!!!!!!
So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross
Till my trophies at last I lay down
I will cling to the old rugged cross
And exchange it someday for a crown.
No more shortcuts. Oh for grace to bear the cross and its pain diligently.
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Journey with Della 