Pondering Knoll: The Manger and the Cross

Friday, December 2, 2011

The Manger and the Cross

Christmas is my favorite time of the year because it brings me to recall all of the wonderful things the Father has done for us, mostly in giving us His Son! In remembering the joy of His birth, I can't help but see it through the blood of His cross. This was His message, even as a babe in a manger. "And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name JESUS, for He will save His people from their sins." Matthew 1:21.

That silent night was the beginning of a cycle Jesus was to complete in living out His life on earth. It wasn't until His death on the cross that we could see more clearly that He would end this journey with life in His resurrection and that He would be the Way in which we could receive new life. Life Death Life. In following His footsteps, we too experience this same cycle. The joy and privilege of life being breathed into us the day we were born into this world is something we should never stop thanking the Father for! The humility of dying to our sins is something we should never let ourselves forget. The pure happiness and honor of receiving new life through the blood of the Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ, is something that demands our soul, our life, our all. This Christmas when we survey the manger, may we also survey the wondrous cross beyond it, and may it bring us all to our knees to worship this glorious King who came to save us from our sins!

“In order to be a disciple we must deny ourselves - this is to exercise authority over our own spirit. We must take up the cross - this is to submit to Christ’s authority. And we must follow - this is continued obedience. This is the road not to confinement, to bondage, to a stunted or arrested development, but to total personal freedom. It means not death but life, not a narrowly circumscribed life but “abundant” life. The gate is narrow but not the life. The gate opens out into largeness of life.”

-Elisabeth Elliot

“No sigh ever reached the Most High, except through Christ—I mean so as to move His heart to pour out His grace. Prayers, groans, tears, all these are like arrows without a bow, till Christ comes and fits them to the string, and shoots them home for you and me. All our prayers are like a victim, with the wood and altar; Christ must bring the fire, and then the sacrifice smokes to heaven. He is the messenger. Oh Christian, do you not rejoice in Him then as the Messenger of the Covenant? He is doing thy errands before the throne tonight, pleading for me, pleading for you."

~C. H. Spurgeon

“Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might, He increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

Isaiah 40:28-31

"...The central place of faith in Christianity, and its significance...is precisely that which, on man's side, adjusts him to the living and merciful presence and action of a trusted God. In its nature, not by any mere arbitrary arrangement, it is his one possible receptive attitude, that in which he brings nothing, so that he may receive all. Thus "faith" is our side of union with Christ. And thus it is our means of possessing all His benefits, pardon, justification, purification, life, peace, glory."

-Handley Dunelm