We had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day filled with family, food and fun. That's something to be thankful for! I hope your special day was a blessing to you.
Now we begin the 'official' move toward the Christmas holiday. Black Friday launches our culture into a time of intensified consumption rationalized under the heading of generous giving. In the midst of the spending and buying frenzy, the first Sunday in Advent propels the Church toward celebrating the historic event that changed the world: the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ.
The Christmas story is a familiar one. Jesus, Son of God, born of a virgin mother through an act of divine conception whereby only God Himself, creator of all that exists, could be the Father of Jesus. We could say that Jesus was born of imperishable, incorruptible, eternal 'seed'; not of the natural cell or perishable, corruptible and finite human 'seed' that characterizes all other human life, like us.
Amazing isn't it? Here is something no less amazing for you to think about this Christmas season. The Bible says that when we are given new life by the grace of God through faith in Christ we are spiritually reborn; "born again (now get this!), not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God." (1 Peter 1:23). Did you catch that? When we come into this world we are all born of that natural, perishable 'seed'. But when we are born again spiritually, we are spiritually conceived by God in a divine act just as Jesus was!
If you are born again through faith in Jesus there has been a holy and supernatural act of God to conceive new life in you. Kind of gives the Christmas theme of birth a whole new meaning doesn't it?
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