“Most people have a Christmas card version of Jesus. It’s all rather sanitized and safe. The Christmas card Jesus wears a permanent smile, and only ever says nice things that make us feel wonderful about ourselves.”

--Tim Chester

O Holy night! The stars are brightly shining; it is the night of the dear Savior’s birth.

Shepherds, in the field abiding watching o’er your flocks by night, God with us is now residing; yonder shines the infant light: Come and worship, come and worship, worship Christ the newborn King

O come, O come, Immanuel, and ransom captive Israel

that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear.

Refrain: Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel shall come to you, O Israel.

O come, O Bright and Morning Star, and bring us comfort from afar!

Dispel the shadows of the night and turn our darkness into light

• Acrophobia—fear of heights
• Arachnophobia—fear of spiders
• Glossophobia—fear of public speaking
• Pemmaphobia—fear of fruitcake
• Kinemortophobia—fear of claymation

Outsiders becoming insiders

Isaiah 9:1–2

. . . in the future he will honor Galilee of the Gentiles, by the way of the sea, along the Jordan—The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. 

Philippians 2:6–7

[Jesus], being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 

“If God created the universe, He created space-time, which is to the universe as the meter is to a poem or the key is to music. To look for Him as one item within the framework which He Himself invented is nonsensical…”

--C. S. Lewis

“An angel revealed to Joseph the primary task for which he came: Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins (Mt 1:21). He is here to cut the nerve of [humanity’s] real dilemma, to solve the problem from which all other problems flow.”

--Francis Schaeffer

Romans 5:6–8

When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. 

Grace overcomes shame, not by uncovering an overlooked cache of excellence in ourselves but simply by accepting us, the whole of us, with no regard to our beauty or our ugliness, our virtue or our vices.

--Lewis Smedes

When we have given up all hope of ever being an acceptable human being, we may hear in our hearts the ultimate reassurance: we are accepted, accepted by grace.