Christmas Characters: The Wilson Family

Today is the last in my series Christmas characters.

If you view the attachment you will see a photo of my family; myself and Pauline my wife. Mark my son and Sharon on the right with his three girls, Victoria, Jillian and Kaitlin. In the green is my son in law, Mark with Sharon my elder daughter and their three boys Eli, Tate and Finn. In the purple is my daughter Sarah with husband Cam and Emily, Kyla and Jesse. All seventeen of us wish you a joy-filled and blessed Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

I won’t be bothering you with my “breakfasts” until the first of the New Year, then it will be back to morning cereals once again.

Ian

Christmas Characters: The Shepherds

Today in the theme of Christmas characters we consider the shepherds.

From the Magi, the rich and the wise, we pass to the shepherds. They were poor, illiterate and landless men, and yet it was to these country-folk that the Lord first announced the “good tidings of great joy”. God chose to pass over the theologians and gray beards of Jerusalem to come in the form of His angels to the hills of Bethlehem.

Why would God choose the simple and the poor to be the first to see His only begotten Son? There may be many reasons, but one of the simplest answers is that there are more poor than any other class of people on earth.

We in the West have little idea of what poverty means, but a trip across a couple of oceans to drop down, say in Mumbai India, would clear up any doubts in our mind about the poor and the conditions in which they live.

In His opening manifesto, Christ declared; “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach the Gospel to the POOR”.

In the shepherds, the poor of the earth are represented, countless millions of them. The Gospel message came first to them. And rest assured there is going to be a lot of them in heaven

Christmas Characters: Herod

Today, in our list of Christmas characters, we come to King Herod.

Herod was not only a killer but he was  also a consummate politician. To the wise men he gave the syrupy speech: “Say chaps, how great that you are looking for this new born prince. When you find him let me know. I’ll be along to pay him my respects.”

We know that if he had had his way he would have taken Christ right out of Christmas. Herod is long gone but his spirit lives on. Still we have the push from the anti Christian lobby to have a politically correct “Happy Holidays” and remove Christ from Christmas, Christmas from schools, carols from the radio, crèches from public buildings and even turn Christmas trees into holiday trees. Anything to kill the babe in his manger.

Thank God, Herod failed then and his spirit is foiled today. Only this morning I read of “flash mobs”, one 5000 in number, descending on malls to spontaneously sing the Hallelujah chorus and “HE INDEED SHALL REIGN FOR EVER AND EVER”

How about that king Herod!

Christmas Characters: Wise Men

This morning.” breakfast with Ian” looks at the wise men. We don’t know the exact number of the Magi. We assume that there were three because there were three gifts that were brought. We do know that to find their way from the East to the Holy Land they combined study, reason and revelation.

The star that they followed moved contrary to all other star patterns to bring these men to the Land of Israel. Once there, REASON told them that if a king was to be born, he most surely would be in a palace in Jerusalem. So that is where they went and consorted with Herod and his priests. REASON had led them astray.

It was not until they left the palace that the star appeared unto them again, this time to lead them to their precise destination.

What lessons do we learn from the wise men? Well here is one. Wisdom and learning and reason have their place in finding the guidance of God, but all are superseded by “Lo the star!”

Everyone of us must have our own star: call it a life dream, a living word in our hearts, a fervent hope, the “shining path that groweth brighter and brighter to the perfect day”

God has given you a star. Keep sight of it and never let it be eclipsed by clouds of reason - yours or other peoples.

Christmas Characters: The Angel Gabriel

This week is our week of Christmas Characters.  Today, Angel Gabriel.

The Christmas message would not be the same without the angels. In Luke’s account the story of Jesus begins six months earlier with the announcement of Gabriel to Zechariah concerning the birth of John. Zechariah was in the temple performing his priestly duties. Suddenly a routine morning service was transformed. Totally transformed. We have the electrifying account of how the Angel Gabriel appeared at the right hand side of the altar of incense and took over the morning ministrations with his own message from God. Where had the Angel come from? He gave the answer to Zechariah. “I am Gabriel that stands in the Presence of God.”

But where was God? Zechariah knew the answer to that question: God was a matter of a few feet away, hidden by the great curtain.

In other words, when God sent Gabriel to speak to Zechariah he only had to move a few feet to pass through the veil to give his message. Heaven was that close.

Actually heaven is always that close, and it seems to me that the Christmas season brings heaven even that much closer, even to our very finger tips. The art of living by faith is to keep heaven that close through out the year.