Dec 19th, 2020: Christmas Blessing - God's Comfort and Generosity
My wife and I have been talking about different scriptures in the Bible the composer used to compose Handel's Messiah lyrics. They are quite powerful and applicable to the present time. That is also one of my favorite Christmas hymns. Let us take a look at one of them today.
Isaiah 40: 1-3
Comfort, comfort my people,
says your God.
2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been completed,
that her sin has been paid for,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.
3 A voice of one calling:
“In the wilderness prepare
the way for the Lord;
make straight in the desert
a highway for our God.
Nothing is more precious than the comfort we have from God at this point. We are lost and broken in many ways. The year 2020 has revealed to us the multiple facets of human sins and how corrupted we can be. Yet, God will reach out to us with His tender love and revelation of His forgiveness.
Let us not be so preoccupied with our fears and anger and fail to see the promise of his coming and being with us. We have fought one another over who is right and who is wrong only to discover that our rightness rests with God alone. We have taken advantage of one another, and only to find out that we do not gain any favor with God by doing that.
God does not just give us what we need. He gives us much more than that. It is the time to be comforted by how lavish the love of God is. It is time to be generous and merciful in our interaction with one another. That is how we are going to prepare for the way of God. It is the most unselfish and giving way. We need to embrace that as another Christmas Blessing.