Week 4 Day 1

 Read Luke 1-2, Sing: Hark the Harold Angels Sing, Memorize: Luke 1:46-50

This is our final week. I know typically we go longer but starting in the New Year I will be working on a site that all of our studies can be found and done through as I exit social media. Also Starting in January I will once again do ladies bible study. Right now I am praying and seeking the Lord what we will do, but it will be more of an intensive.

Luke 1-2. The account of the birth of Christ. Not a story, not a legend, the account. The account of the Word made flesh dwelling among us. I get very weepy as I study this and listen to the Christmas hymns, realizing the length that God went to sending His Son, and the extent His Son went to putting on flesh to become our Mediator. That our sins ultimately were placed on him, on the cross, under the full wrath of God, that we might be called His righteousness. The miracle of Christmas grows every year in my heart, thinking on His birth, and that in the still small quiet of the moment...the intentions were always to die for our sins. Born that He might die. 

We strip away this. We all do in our own ways. I have done it by trying to hyper spiritualize Christmas...trying to figure out how to best make it so much about God- that it became works based. No grace, no joy... others might over commercializing it.... forgetting Jesus and getting and giving cases of want-me's and debt. In Him, we have found goodness and beauty and the truth of Christmas. Christ does not have a list... of how to celebrate Christmas the "most Christian way," or what is the most Biblical Christmas celebration... No its true. We find in scripture how to delight and meditate on Him daily, how to worship Him...with all our hearts souls minds and strength. That should be our measure for Christmas. 

It can become like a wedding. People get so caught up in the one day, making it perfect, spending the money, making the meal, the cards, the church that they forget their spouse. And the wedding is just a day, the marriage is a lifetime commitment! And Christ... an eternal one!

When I read Luke 1-2 I am amazed at all the details God perfectly aligned to fulfill prophecy of long ago. The world would never be the same. Christ came, and dwelt among us, and now as believers dwells within us. 

With these thoughts, it has been easier to switch to a Christmas focus to a Christ focus. Worshipping him through song and prayer, cutting out access things and to dos and expectations and desiring to be still and know Him. Christmas can become a time of year with GREAT celebration and jubilee we welcome and rejoice and remind people of our King. 

I love Mary's response in Luke 1. She worships. She magnifies. She glorifies. She praises God. Oh that this may be us this week. Sister, take time even today to prepare Him room, that we may celebrate and usher in the birth of the Savior and the coming of our King!