Return of the SlightStrider

Dear esteemed and valued readers who frequent this blog, (Hey, I can dream can't I?) Happy 2006 to you! My Christmas break is almost gone and I feel like I've only been able to touch the ground a couple of times. I've been checking my email very randomly (and the attention towards my blogs has even been worse). I'm like a stone, skipping on water. I just had a very enjoyable (albeit, frenetic) week, coming back early to college for a Winterim class. I've been under a lot of conviction over all the great books about God that I've been given and have yet to read. Texts beyond the count of my fingers and toes are salted throughout the bookshelves in my room and by the front door. Just recently I finally picked up a book of morning and evening devotions by C. H. Spurgeon. It was under at least a 4-year layer of dust with pages just as crisp as the day it was given to me. This morning's devotion was a genuflection upon prayer. Spurgeon simply remarks on how rife the pages of the Bible are with prayer: Genesis has barely just begun when "men began to call upon the Lord" and the some of the final words in Revelation are "Maranatha! . . . Amen." I was having some fun lately this Christmas. Whenever someone said to me, "Happy Holidays!" I would reply, "Which one?" However, I was not always so merciful. If people I knew at church wished me the same, I would counterattack (with sanctified sarcasm), "Well, after all, Xmas is merely that tradition when Xians celebrate the birth of X." (If the well-wisher was not of African-American descent, I would answer, "And a Happy Kwanzaa to you, too!") While reading some of the blogs of TMC schoolmates that I know, I read many reminiscences about friends, family, presents, relaxation, Narnia, etc. I thought that there was a sad shortcoming of exclaiming what Christmas and Jesus meant to them. It's not just us folks, justified by Christ's blood, who read each others' blogs and other webpages. I keep reminding myself that there are a great deal of unredeemed eyes & hearts that God may bring across our little bubble of friends. And besides, the Gospel is as equally important to us Christians as to unbelievers. I guess I'll say my piece here, to you, first. --- I quote from our family Christmas letter this year, an opportunity which the Lord gave to me to compose: Two millennia ago, when the fullness of time was accomplished, God provided us with the only essential Christmas gift we have ever needed: Himself. Unto us a Child is born, a Savior, Who is Christ the Lord (Isaiah 9:6, Luke 2:11). Bound up inseparably with Christmas is Easter: that while we were such unlovable sinners ("man disobeying, disloyal" -- John Milton, Paradise Lost), God so loved us that He crushed His only Son, Jesus, in our deserving place (Romans 5:8, John 3:16, Isaiah 53:10). The reason for this season is Jesus of Nazareth, the only baby in all of history who was born for the sake of dying, for taking away the shame of others upon Himself. It is our prayer that this Christmas, you rejoice in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and take joy in the hope of rebirth that He has provided for us. Mild He lays His glory by, Born that man no more may die, Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth. Hark! the herald angels sing, "Glory to the newborn King!"