Fri, March 29, 2024

Faith Friday: Thinking about Christmas

stevefaithfriday
Steve Swanson is the former station manager of 88.3 WAFJ radio station in North Augusta.
Part 2

The celebration of Christmas is unlike anything else. All of us are impacted by it.

The birth of Jesus, God coming to earth as a baby, is the most incredible true story ever conceived. Mixed in with the celebration, we’re often wrapped up with gift buying, party planning, family events, concerts and many other activities. It can be a crazy time of year for sure.

I pray your Christmas will be full of joy as you celebrate the greatest gift ever given. If you have children in your home, I’d encourage you to watch the animated Christmas movie The Star. It’s one of our favorites for “kids of all ages.” Have a joyful Christmas celebration!

eoy CAMPAIGN HEADER

I’ve collected some quotes for you about Christmas. I hope you’ll find them thought-provoking. When you finish reading these thoughts, I hope you will take a few moments to ask yourself what the celebration is all about and what Christmas really means to you.

“At this Christmas when Christ comes, will He find a warm heart? Mark the season of Advent by loving and serving the others with God’s own love and concern.”
Mother Teresa

“And when the Lord Jesus has become your peace, remember, there is another thing: good will towards men. Do not try to keep Christmas without good will towards men.”
Charles Spurgeon

“Peace with God, peace with others, and peace in your own heart.”
Rick Warren

“All the Christmas presents in the world are worth nothing without the presence of Christ.”
David Jeremiah

“Who can add to Christmas? The perfect motive is that God so loved the world. The perfect gift is that He gave His only Son. The only requirement is to believe in Him. The reward of faith is that you shall have everlasting life.”
Corrie Ten Boom

“I truly believe that if we keep telling the Christmas story, singing the Christmas songs, and living the Christmas spirit, we can bring joy and happiness and peace to this world.”
Norman Vincent Peale

“Best of all, Christmas means a spirit of love, a time when the love of God and the love of our fellow men should prevail over all hatred and bitterness, a time when our thoughts and deeds and the spirit of our lives manifest the presence of God.”
George F. McDougall

“The Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the Incarnation.”
J.I. Packer

“You can never truly enjoy Christmas until you can look up into the father’s face and tell him you have received his Christmas gift.”
John R. Rice

“The only people whose soul can truly magnify the Lord are…people who acknowledge their lowly estate and are overwhelmed by the condescension of the magnificent God.” –
John Piper

“…And then, just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from God. Our eyes are at fault, that is all. God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment. No evil can befall us; whatever men may do to us, they cannot but serve the God who is secretly revealed as love and rules the world and our lives.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“It comes every year and will go on forever. And along with Christmas belong the keepsakes and the customs. Those humble, everyday things a mother clings to, and ponders, like Mary in the secret spaces of her heart.”
Marjorie Holmes

“Mary knew God loved her. From the moment Gabriel appeared to her, Mary has a distinct sense that God’s presence was with her and His hand upon her. She didn’t understand everything that was happening, but she was certain that God would be with her through it all.”
Stormie Omartian

“It is impossible to conceive how different things would have turned out if that birth had not happened whenever, wherever, however it did … for millions of people who have lived since, the birth of Jesus made possible not just a new way of understanding life but a new way of living it. It is a truth that, for twenty centuries, there have been untold numbers of men and women who, in untold numbers of ways, have been so grasped by the child who was born, so caught up in the message he taught and the life he lived, that they have found themselves profoundly changed by their relationship with him.”
Frederick Buechner

“I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month.”
Harlan Miller

“We consider Christmas as the encounter, the great encounter, the historical encounter, the decisive encounter, between God and mankind. He who has faith knows this truly; let him rejoice.”
Pope Paul VI

“As I wrote ‘The Christmas Lamp’ I realized that tradition is priceless, whether you have a small family, a large family, or no family. Tradition doesn’t have to be logical; it only has to emphasize the light of Christ and his everlasting love.”
Lori Copeland

“For the power of Christmas rests in the fact that we will never completely understand the vastness of it, but that will never stop its ability to completely transform the fullness of us.”
Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Into this world, this demented inn in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes uninvited.”
Thomas Merton

“Moreover, the fact that the Son of God became man through being conceived by the Holy Spirit and being born of the Virgin Mary, that is, not of the will of the flesh nor of the will of a human father, but of God (John 1:13), means that at this decisive point in the incarnation the distinctive place and function of man as male human being was set aside.”
Thomas F. Torrance

Subscribe to our eNewsletter for the BEST local business news delivered to your Inbox each week day.

* indicates required

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More Posts

Cyber attacks: Not if but when?

Think your company is too small to be hacked? No. So what happens to the integrity of your business when your customer’s info is breached?