I was knocked out by some familiar words this afternoon:
Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth PEACE to men on
whom His FAVOUR rests.
Luke 2:14
Every Christmas I’ve skimmed over this short song the angels sang thinking, ‘That’s nice.’
But this is incredible news.
God is so crazy about us that the only way He could show us what He’s like and invite us into a relationship with Him was to come to earth Himself. In Jesus, God became man (human mum, God dad), and spent His whole life showing us what God is like. Upshot of that is: we know God is nice and He likes us. He loves us passionately.
When Jesus was born, God offered peace to us.
Peace. Wow. Only recently have I discovered the seven-fold blessing of God’s peace:
*peace*
*completeness*
*wholeness*
*harmony*
*welfare*
*prosperity*
*tranquillity*
This is God’s heart for us. Roy Godwin, in his book The Way of Blessing, asks what it would look like if this peace was evident in our home, family, street, church? It took me all of a second to realise the difference it would make – and ever since, I’ve been speaking out this blessing over the people I love and live near.
When Jesus was born, God was saying His favour rests on us. We are a blessed people. We all love a hero, whether it’s Jack Reacher, James Bond or Katniss Everdeen. Jesus is the ultimate hero. He is God, come to earth so that we can know what God is like. More than that, He became the Way for us to come into relationship with God ourselves by dying and then rising again. He took all the wrong stuff that we think, say and do, and served the death sentence that was ours, so that when we accept what He’s done, the Father will look at us and see the perfection and beauty of Jesus.
This is awesome news that makes me want to yell WOOO HOOOOO! It’s not just for Christmas, it’s for now 🙂