1.
Weather
More Important thn Christmas
2.
Our Greatest Need
3.
When Jesus was Born
4. Christmas
Statistics
5. The
Best Gifts at Christmas
6. The
Microwave
7. Poem
- The Christ-child
8. Poem
- Dearest Jesus
9. Poem
- Praise Him
10.
Christmas on the Moon
Click
here to download these illustrations
in
a zipped file of ASCII text.
Weather More Important than Christmas
To avoid offending anybody, the school dropped religion altogether and started singing about the weather. At my son's school, they now hold the winter progam in February and sing increasingly nonmemorable songs such as "Winter Wonderland," "Frosty the Snowman" and--this is a real song--"Suzy Snowflake," all of which is pretty funny because we live in Miami. A visitor from another planet would assume that the children belonged to the Church of Meteorology. Dave Barry in his "Notes on Western Civilization"
(Chicago Tribune Magazine, July 28, 1991)
If our greatest need had been information,
God would have sent us an educator;
If our greatest need had been technology,
God would have sent us a scientist;
If our greatest need had been money,
God would have sent us an economist;
If our greatest need had been pleasure,
God would have sent us an entertainer;
But our greatest need was forgiveness,
so God sent us a Savior.
When was Jesus born? No, not on December 25. Though Christians had adopted that date by A.D. 336, Christ was born "when shepherds watched their flocks by night." In other words, most likely in the spring. And no, He wasn't born in the year A.D. 1. The Bible tells us that Herod the Great ruled Palestine when Jesus was born, and Herod died in 4 B.C.--so Jesus had to have been born not long before that. Blame Dionysiuys Exiguus for this one--he's the sixth century monk who came up with the idea of splitting history into A.D. and B.C. He just chose the wrong date to do so, that's all.
Signs of the Times, Dec, 1991, p. 6
Americans used 28,497,464 rolls and sheets of wrapping paper, 16,826,362 packages of tags and bows, 372,430,684 greeting cards, and 35,200,000 Christmas trees during the 1989 Christmas season.
Garbage Magazine, quoted in Signs of the Times, 12-1991, p. 7
==========================
The "fear not's" in the infancy naratives:
1. The "fear not" of salvation: "And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings...which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord" (Luke 2:10,11).
2. The "fear not" of the humanly impossible: "Fear not, Mary:... the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee:...For with God nothing shall be impossible" (Luke 1:30, 35, 37).
3. The "fear not" of unanswered prayer: "Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John" (Luke 1:13).
4. The "fear not" of immediate obedience: "Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife:...Then Joseph ...did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him" (Matthew 1:20,24).
NPS
==========================
In his book, Science Speaks, Peter Stoner applies the modern science of probability to just eight prophecies regarding Christ. He says, "The chance that any man might have ...fulfilled all eight prophecies is one in 10 to the 17th. That would be 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000." (one hundred quadrillion) Stoner suggests that "we take 10 to the 17th silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They will cover all of the state 2 feet deep. Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly... Blindfold a man and tell him he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up [that one marked silver dollar.] What chance would he have of getting the right one?" Stoner concludes, "Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing those eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man,...providing they wrote them in their own wisdom."
Some gifts you can give this Christmas are beyond monetary value: Mend a quarrel, dismiss suspicion, tell someone, "I love you." Give something away--anonymously. Forgive someone who has treated you wrong. Turn away wrath with a soft answer. Visit someone in a nursing home. Apologize if you were wrong. Be expecially kind to someone with whom you work. Give as God gave to you in Christ, without obligation, or announcement, or reservation, or hypocrisy.
C Swindoll, Growing Strong, pp. 400-1
Pastor Clifford S. Stewart of Louisville, Kentucky, sent his parents a microwave oven one Christmas. Here's how he recalls the experience:
"They were excited that now they, too, could be a part of the instant generation. When Dad unpacked the microwave and plugged it in, literally within seconds, the microwave transformed two smiles into frown! Even after reading the directions, they couldn't make it work. "Two days later,my mother was playing bridge with a friend and confessed her inability to get hat microwave oven even to boil water. 'To get this sillything to work,' she exclaimed, 'I really don't need better directions; I just needed my son to come along with the gift!'"
When God gave the gift of salvation, he didn't send a booklet of complicated instructions for us to figure out; he sent his Son.
The Christ-child lay on Mary's lap,
His hair was like a light.
(O weary, weary is the world,
But here is all aright.)
The Christ-child lay on Mary's breast,
His hair was like a star.
(O stern and cunning are the kings,
But here the true hearts are.)
The Christ-child lay on Mary's heart,
His hair was like a fire.
(O weary, weary is the world,
But here the world's desire.)
The Christ-child stood at Mary's knee,
His hair was like a crown.
And all the flowers looked up at Him,
And all the stars looked down.
G.K. Chesterton in The Wild Knight
Ah, dearest Jesus, holy Child,
Make thee a bed, soft, undefiled,
Within my heart, that it may be
A quiet chamber kept for Thee.
My heart for very joy doth leap,
My lips no more can silence keep,
I too must sing, with joyful tongue,
That sweetest ancient cradle song,
Glory to God in highest heaven,
Who unto man His Son hath given
While angels sing with pious mirth.
A glad new year to all the earth.
Martin Luther
Praise Him for the incarnation,
for the word made flesh.
I will not sing of shepherds
watching flocks on frosty nights,
or angel choristers.
I will not sing of a stable bare in
Bethlehem,
or lowing oxen,
wise men trailing star with gold,
frankincense, and myrrh.
Tonight I will sing praise to the Father
who stood on heaven's threshold
and said farewell to his Son
as he stepped across the stars
to Bethlehem and Jerusalem.
And I will sing praise to the infinite,
eternal Son,
who became most finite, a baby
who would one day be executed for
my crime.
Praise him in the heavens,
Praise him in the stable,
Praise him in my heart.
Joseph Bayly
THE MOON (EP)—On Christmas Eve,
somewhere above the forbidding landscape of the moon, the voices of Frank
Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders carried to earth dwellers the
story of creation as found in Genesis 1:1-10.
“In the beginning, God created
the heaven and the earth,” intoned Anders in Apollo 8’s unannounced litany
broadcast as the astronauts’ TV camera flashed back a remarkable picture
of the deeply-shadowed lunar landscape.
Borman closed the lunar telecast with these words: “Good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you upon the good earth.”
The trio then closed the moonship’s fourth telecast and began preparations for the successful blast out of lunar orbit to return to the “grand oasis in the vastness of space, earth.”
--Return
to Stories & Illustrations
