A friend at my age started crying today when he mentioned a Christmas hymn he used to sing with his mother.  My friend is usually not very emotional, but this time he felt like bawling. That I found sympathetic, and I told him that I ´m moved too when I think of my mother.

Indeed I am.  My mother was not an intellectual, she was sick and actually a manic depressive case, but what she in my childhood told me about God I still find relevant today.  My mother was so simple, but  here was a case  the world may consider “foolish” for God “to shame the wise”.

Today I´m thankful God chose it to be that way.  I have often been hopelessly “down”, but then the Spirit whispered to me that “God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong”, and He “chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are.”  (1 Cor. 1:27-28).  I´m one of those “ low things”.

I´ve seen wonderful conversions in my preaching ministry but it has always been in deep realization of my own “nothingness” even to the point of not wishing to live any longer.  And now I´m in the waiting room of a glorious eternity where my true citizenship is and where I shall be transformed, however “low”, “to be like His glorious body by the power that enables Him to subject all things to Himself”  (Phil. 3:21)

This is the kind of language I like to speak when the cliché question “How are you?” is put to me.  This is really a wonderful Christmas greeting to convey in my own stammering tongue which I could gladly share with my visiting friend who is very kind but not born again, so I pray for him.

I said “Christmas greeting”, didn´t I? Oh yes,  the Shepherds got a glimpse of  glory on their field.  So do we on our fields, with His word shining on our path (on our fields) from the Bible (Ps. 119:105, 230).  Amen? 

Dec. 10, 2020 - jn