Monday Morning Music Ministry

We tend not to think about all the aspects of Jesus’s life. We think about His ministry, His teaching and parables, His prayers, often enough: or so we should.

But when we think of His life, sometimes we are prejudiced by Sunday-school pamphlets, and greeting cards, and the holiday industries, to compartmentalize the events in His life – to view them as the settings and backgrounds for the really important stuff.

But it is not only surprising, but important to our faith, to think about all the aspects of Jesus’s life. It is very significant, for instance, that He came into the world pretty much as He left it: despised and disregarded; acknowledged for who He was by hardly anyone; a mere handful of people with Him at each event (but His mother, always there); in a borrowed stable at His birth, in a borrowed tomb at His death.

To think about these aspects confronts us with many things. One, at the Christmas season, is this: the simultaneous humility and grandeur of the incarnate God. For there was no “arc” to Jesus’s life, no “career” in the modern sense. He didn’t become flesh and dwell among us to incorporate a ministry, to establish a denomination, to build a business – even a religious, spiritual, faith-based organization as we call things today.

He came to save humanity from its sins, to offer the way to salvation, to redeem creation as the One True Way. Therefore His birth is very similar to His death… and it should cause us to think not just about what He did, but who He was.

Isaiah had prophesied: “…unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” Notice that the “shalls” refer to the triumphant Jesus – still prophetic? – the “is” word referring to a child, to a son. Since Isaiah lived hundreds of years before Jesus, these logically could have been “shalls” too.

That aspect is for us to think about today. No less important than the words of Jesus or His coming reign… is the PERSON of Jesus. We all have had children, or have been children! Of course God wanted us to identify with His incarnate Self in the most powerful – and the most tender – way He could. A baby. A son.

He SHALL be called mighty; He SHALL be our counselor. But right now think of Him as a baby.

Hold Him in your arms. Love Him as He loves you.

Beautiful imagery accompanies a tender new song called “For Unto Us a Child is Born.”

Click:  For Unto Us a Child Is Born

Rick Marschall was on the editorial staff of the “1599 Geneva Bible Restoration Project” (Tolle Lege Press, 2007)