Category: Advent

Devotional After Christmas, the church calendar enters twelve days of Epiphany – from Dec. 26 to Jan. 6. The dictionary defines an epiphany as “a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something, an intuitive grasp of reality through something (such as an event) usually simple and striking or an…

Devotional If you are a parent, you no doubt have had times when you wished you could read your child’s mind – to know what they were thinking, to get a glimpse into their heart. We used to play a game where we would ask, “If you could have one wish, what would it be?”…

Devotional So far we’ve spent the month of December trying to see Christmas through the eyes of the people who actually lived it, and we’ve learned a lot about God in the process. We see: It is always better to obey God, even when it doesn’t make sense. We can trust God. Even when we’re…

Devotional The story of Jesus saturates the Bible narrative and prophecies of His first Advent are found throughout the Old Testament. One scholar, J. Barton Payne, found as many as 574 verses in the Old Testament that somehow point to or describe or reference the coming Messiah. Alfred Edersheim found 456 Old Testament verses referring…

Devotional Why include John the Baptist in the characters of Christmas? Think back to the beginning of the Christmas story in Luke – it starts with the birth of John the Baptist. The two were cousins. No doubt they spent a lot of time together growing up; their mothers were close after all. And the…

Devotional Before we leave this story of the Wise Men, the horror in Bethlehem and the escape to Egypt, I have one question for you – how did the Wise Men know to look for the star and follow it to the Messiah? They were from the East; Scripture tells us, they were not fully…

Devotional Gabriel, the angel sent by God to be His messenger and coordinator of all His plans, had one more task to complete the Christmas season. An angel appears to Joseph, again in a dream, letting him know his family was in danger and he needed to get out of town. Gabriel isn’t specifically mentioned,…

Devotional The story of the Star of Bethlehem appears only in the Book of Matthew. The Gospel tells us that a bright star appeared in the eastern sky when Jesus was born, famously seen by a group of Wise Men. Although the Wise Men are a prominent part of the Christmas story – in nativity…

Devotional Every story needs a villain, and the Master storyteller doesn’t hold back in the Christmas story. This one has one doozy of a villain – enter King Herod. Pretty sure your Nativity set doesn’t include King Herod. But to ignore him is to not only ignore the world into which Jesus was born, but…

Devotional Soon after Simeon appears in the Temple to meet Jesus, we are told of an enigmatic prophetess named Anna (Greek form of Hannah) who also happened to be there to witness these events. Anna is described as a “prophetess,” which tells us she was gifted and unafraid to declare the word of the Lord.…

Devotional Unlike most popular versions of the Nativity story, Luke’s doesn’t end at the manger, and the three Magi do not appear. Instead, like any Jewish newborn of the day, Jesus is circumcised eight days later and is presented at the Temple in Jerusalem (Luke 2:21–22). At this occasion, a devout man named Simeon rejoices…

Devotional Every year on Christmas Eve my father would grab the family Bible, open it to the Gospel of Luke, and read the Christmas story to seven young children, wide-eyed and rapt with attention. Yes, it was a requirement before we were allowed to open our presents, but we couldn’t wait to hear the story…

Devotional Prophecy is an indispensable part of the Nativity story – with good reason. God has always spoken and acted in real history, through actual events and real human lives. He has made promises and kept them, and called people to record and remember them. He’s not an obscure deity of myth and legend, but…

Devotional Stop for a minute and think – you have great news, the best news ever. Who do you want to tell? Who do you go to first? I don’t know about you, but I’d tell my spouse, my closest friend, someone I trust, someone who would be there to celebrate with me. Who did…

Devotional Angels serve a variety of roles in Scripture: they advocate, they protect, they make war, they announce, they teach, they comfort, and they guide. All of those roles can be seen in the Christmas story. They announce to Zechariah, Mary, and Joseph. They flood the earth with a celebration to the shepherds. They warn…

Devotional In his book, An Angel’s Story, Max Lucado sets the scene for the animals. “I’ve heated the water!” ”No need to yell, Joseph. I hear you fine.” Mary would have heard had Joseph whispered. The stable was even smaller than Joseph had imagined, but the innkeeper was right – it was clean. I started…

Devotional In his book, An Angel’s Story, Max Lucado imagines the scene at the Inn in Bethany when Mary and Joseph arrive. “But don’t you have just one room?” Joseph pleaded “To be honest, I did. But only moments ago a large delegation arrived and took every last bed. I don’t have a place for…

Devotional To understand Joseph’s perspective of the Christmas narrative, we need to understand the customs surrounding betrothals/marriages of the time. In biblical times, people were married in their early youth, and marriages were usually contracted within the narrow circle of the clan and the family. Interpreting their “betrothal” as a modern-day “engagement” would be wrong.…

Devotional Gabriel shows up a third time in the Christmas narrative, this time to reassure Joseph, Mary’s betrothed, that she was not unfaithful to him but was carrying the Son of God. It was the first of two times Gabriel would reassure Mary’s not-so-sure husband. What’s an angel to do? Joseph was a godly man…

Devotional Imagine the delight and joy in the lives of Zechariah and Elizabeth! Not only would they become parents after decades of despair and disbelief, but they would parent the last of the Old Testament prophets and a forerunner of the Messiah. Can you imagine? Elizabeth could have complained that God waited too long. She…

Devotional The Old Testament ends with this verse from the book of Malachi: See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents. (Malachi 4:5-6) Why…

Devotional The first time we hear about an angel called Gabriel is in the book of Daniel, an angel sent by God in answer to Daniel’s prayer that was delayed for three weeks due to fighting with the devil. It took the Archangel Michael to break him free. Then we don’t hear about him again…

Devotional As we celebrate this season looking through the eyes of all the characters of Christmas, there is none so unlikely to be at the center of this divine story as Mary. As a young, poor woman (guesstimates are she was around 14 or 15), she wasn’t looking for prominence. She was simply living out…

Devotional Have you ever wondered what the angel who carried God’s message to the world thought about that task? Gabriel was the angel chosen by God to tell: Zechariah that he and his wife would have a son who would prepare the way for God Mary that she would mother Christ Joseph that he should…