Pondering Christmas

Ponder Number One:

Why that year? Why did God send His son that particular year? Why not 200 years earlier? Why not 2000 years earlier? Why not 100 years later, or 1000 years later?

Paul tells the Galatians, “In the fullness of time God sent His son…”

When the time was right, when it was God’s perfect time, He sent the Messiah to be born as a human baby.

Often we wonder, “Why now, Lord?” “Why is this happening to me NOW?”

God’s timing for when Christ was to be born, God’s timing for events in my life is also perfect.


Ponder Number Two:

Why in a stable? Where animals stayed and defecated on the floor?

And why did Mary lay her new-born baby in a manger, where animals ate?

Couldn’t God, the creator of the universes, have found a better place for His Son to begin life here?

If the Son of God could be born in a stable, if God’s Only Son was laid in a manger, how can I complain about any, ANY, of my own circumstances?


Ponder Number Three:

Why Mary? A young girl and not even married? And why Joseph? What did he do to be worthy of being foster father to God’s own son?

And why me? Why does God send His son into my life? When I think about this, really think about it, I am in awe!


Ponder Number Four:

Why did God send angles to SHEPHERDS??? Why not to the rabbis, or to the merchants, or to the women gathered at the town well? SHEPHERDS??? Smelly, dirty, calloused SHEPHERDS??? Shepherds near the bottom of the social order?

“They told everyone they met” about what they had seen, Luke tells us. Can people tell from the awe, the joy in my life, what I have seen?

Ponder Number Five:

Christ, the Messiah, the Redeemer came in a way that no one, NO ONE expected. At a time, in a place, to a couple, announced to nobodies, to redeem all of humankind. To make the once for all sacrifice for me.

There are multiple scriptures that tell us He will come again and Revelation tells us that “Death is gone for good – tears gone, crying gone, pain gone – all the first order of things is gone.” And there will be a new heaven and a new earth.

Even as we long for this to be, are we looking for The Christ, expecting the King of the Universes in much the same way the Jews looked for the Messiah 2000 years ago? Are we, will we be as mistaken as they? Or do we look for Him, and find Him in some of the most unexpected places, the most unexpected ways.

Even so, come Lord Jesus, come.

Amen