Continuity w/o End

(Written in 27th Dec 2022)

Today we come to the Third day of Christmas as the season continues, just as the Boxing Day sales 💷 continue up until the end of the year. With shops and supermarkets 🛒 casting out their lines 🎣 in hopes of baiting out consumers, if they haven't spent enough on Christmas already 😅

With the month before preoccupied with Christmas Dinner 🍗🦃 and finding gifts 🎁 for loved ones, Boxing Day sales provide the means of grabbing those deals and preparing for the New Year. You may even be thinking about 'New Year Resolutions' 🤔 and living up to the 'New Year, New You' vibe 😎✌️

It seems that Christmas could well be compared to a roller-coaster ride which has had its twists 🥨 and turns, it's ups ⬆️ and its downs ⬇️ until all the hype and excitement ends as it comes to a stop ✋. Leaving customers moving onto the next thrill, having 'been there and done that'. Much like the ancient Romans, moving on from the Christmas equivalent of Saturnalia to the Feast of Compitalia which now honored Household gods 🏠 and made atonement 🤝 to the female daemon Mania 😈 with woollen dolls 🎎 representing the free people in the house and woollen balls 🧶 representing the slaves in the house to make atonement, taking them instead of the lives in the house.

If you can imagine living in those circumstances, it would be very difficult to move on and look forward to the New Year if you were facing a life and death situation. However, this too is the beauty of Christmas 🌟 for He not only came into the world as the baby 👼 we know in the Nativity, but He came as our atonement (1 John 2:2) to save us (John 3:17) that we might have life ❤️ and have it 'more abundantly' (John 10:10) if only we believe (John 20:31) 🙏🏻

Such was the Ministry of Jesus as a man, the Ministry of Reconciliation (2 Cor 5:18) 💞 to reconnect Father to Son. For it says in John 1:12 that as we receive Him 🤗 we become His sons/children and to us, He becomes 'Our Father who art in Heaven'. Such a relationship may be hard to fathom 🤔 first to acknowledge there is a God, a Master Builder (Heb 3:4) who brought the universe into being (Gen 1:1) and yet despite being done with his creation (Gen 2:2), even the Psalmist King David wondered why God the creator cared so much (Psa 8:3-6) 😵😅

This brings me back to John 3:16 that I sent on Christmas Day, how He sent Jesus out of love. Love that began when He was born of the Virgin Mary and continued throughout His life until His death on the ✝️ where He became our atonement to reconnect us 🔌 back to God. This selfless act, what I would call an Act of God as opposed to the 'legal' definition, was in His capacity as Prophet, which was symbolised in the gift of Myrrh which was typically used to anoint the dead.

Now I don't know about you, but that's a strange gift to give to an ordinary baby 😵 that you'd think the person giving it was out of their mind 🤯 - but of course, Christ was no ordinary baby, or rather no ordinary child when He met the wise men (Matt 2), in consideration of the act of King Herod's decree 👑 to kill all children under 2yrs old in order to eliminate the threat to his throne. Only for this act to be prophecied over 400 years earlier by the prophet Jeremiah, proving God to be true (Rom 3:4) and His omniscience into the future.

It is by His omniscience that we sing, 🎶 "Because He lives, I can face tomorrow"🎵 because we are assured that 🎶"He holds the future"🎵. For just as He came to rescue the Jews and give Hope when He walked on Earth, His Ministry did not end. The work that began at Christmas 🌟 continues to this day 👍 so you too can have Hope and that "Blessed Assurance"

#JesustheReason4theSeason

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