Weekly Devotionals

True Christmas

So Herod called the visitors from the East to a secret meeting and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem with these instructions: "Go and make a careful search for the child; and when you find him, let me know, so that I too may go and worship him." Matt 2:8

Major Josef Hell when interviewing Adolph Hitler in 1922 asked him what he intended to do if he had full freedom against the Jews. Hitler replied, “Once I really am in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews.” Six million Jews and about 5 million others were killed during the Second World War, not in battle, but through calculated and systematic destruction.

The largest famine in human history took place in China between the years 1959 and 1961 during the years when Mao and his administration launched the Great Leap Forward. The sanctity of human life was disregarded in this rapid attempt to achieve economic advances that took other nations many decades to realize. Unpublished Chinese materials suggest death count at totals closer to 40 million. The cause was more than natural. It was manmade.

These frightening incidents and many more reveal that human thoughts and actions have worsened to the point where they cannot distinguish between what is holy and what is evil. We find sense in committing ghastly acts because we are lost.

Let me present to you at this point a person who confronts this situation of man’s lostness. Jesus was hanging on the cross with two criminals on either side of him. One of them mocked Him saying, “If you are really the Son of God save yourself and us”. The second criminal retorted by saying, "Don't you fear God; we are getting what our deeds deserve, but this man has done nothing wrong." Here was a man who had made dreadful moral choices and had no reason to talk good about someone in his state of hopelessness. However, his whole perspective changed and his disoriented life suddenly seemed to have found meaning when he met Jesus on the cross. This is seen in the appeal he makes to Jesus, “Remember me when you are in heaven”.

Our lives find purpose and meaning not in something we assume is true and sincerely follow it, but only when we allow Jesus Christ to be born into our lives. He reconciles us back to God and it is in this reconciliation between the creator and the created that our life finds its true meaning. Christmas is celebrated to remember the birth of Jesus Christ 2000 years ago; however, true Christmas is when we allow Him to be born into our lives today.

Contributed by Paul V. Kumar