CHRISTMAS: A time of remembrance & celebration

A time of remembrance & celebration

 

For the Christian holidays featuring Christmas and Easter, are annual reminders of all God has done for us in Christ. We can help our children appreciate the significance of these occasions’ best by using them as God used the festivals in Israel, as opportunities for individuals to relive, to participate in the sacred events.

·     The Feast of Tabernacles (Exodus 23:16; Deuteronomy 16:13). Like Passover this feast taught family members of all ages about God’s nature and what he had done for them and was a time of renewed commitment to God.

·     The Festival of Hanukkah originated as the festival of the dedication or cleansing of the Temple. It reminds us of the victory won by the Maccabees in 165 B.C.E. to insure the purity of the worship of God and to preserve the distinctiveness of Israel and Jewish identity.

"Hanukkah looks back to a victory and the preservation of the Jewish people when they were in the land. For us it also looks forward to a time when our Jewish people will be preserved despite intense suffering. This preservation, again while Jewish people are in the land, will culminate in the victory won by the Great Shepherd, Yeshua." Messianic Services,  by Dr. John Fischer

In the congregation and at home we can let children act out different roles: let them be Mary or Joseph or a shepherd or be a disciple of Jesus when He is crucified, or one of the women who finds the empty tomb.

While Herod refused to worship Jesus, many welcomed Him and came to offer the Christ child their love, their worship, and their gifts. How good it is this Christmas season to offer Jesus our love, our worship, and to express our thanks with tangible gifts.

It’s important to know that God does not intend for our relationship with him to be only meditation, reflection and confession of sin. We are also to praise Him for who He is and for what He has done for us. Christmas is a time of celebration to renew our faith and to commemorate God’s goodness.

I want to share with you a devotional I discovered many years ago from the “365 Day Devotional Commentary” by Lawrence O. Richards 

December 25 - Revelation 9:12-21

“Every now and then Sarah crawls up in her mother’s lap and says, “Give me love.” They hug and pat each other, coo and smile, and feel especially close, Mom and daughter.

Christmas is just such a time for us. “Give me love,” is Jesus’ way. We gather around Him, eager to hug and be hugged. Eager to be reminded of His love, and eager to affirm ours as well.

There’s something about love that draws us. And there’s something about punishment that repels. We see that in our home too. Even when punishment is well deserved, and Sarah knows it, her lower lip sullenly protrudes. She looks accusingly out of angry eyes, and sometimes even shouts out her feelings that it’s all unfair.

This is a contrast we need to see this Christmas time, as we read of God’s terrible judgments on a sinful human race—and feel shocked that Revelation reports, they “still did not repent.” They did not change their minds or change their ways.

That’s why Christmas is such an appropriate expression of our faith. It’s God reminding us that He has heard our cry of “give me love.” And He has given love in the Christ Child whose birth we celebrate.

As long as the world has Christmas, God reaches out to give us love, and the door of salvation is open wide. Oh, let us speak to others of this love, before the judgment comes, and hardened hearts are frozen in a rebellion that will lock them away from love for all eternity.”

Christmas is where we celebrate the love that we have received through Jesus, God’s gift to us, not the judgment that we deserve.