Thoughts
There are times that my thoughts of Christ are more dealing with intellect than emotion, and other times that its more centered around emotions than intellect. Its a continual striving in my mind for balance between the two.
The past few years I’ve thought about how Christmas time is more of an emotional time for me than Easter. And I’m not talking about family, gifts, etc. I’m talking about Christmas in the sense of my thoughts regarding humanity and who Christ is and my relationship with both.
This isn’t something I fully understand or have ever discussed, just something I’ve played around with in my mind. Also, I have a hard time putting these thoughts into words. Some of this emotion has come from learning more of the Old Testament and what was really meant by sacrifice and covenants.
Just the thought of God–the God of the Old Testament, with power and majesty, wisdom — meeting humanity where it is in order to set things back to where they should be. To put things back in order. To give us a way to get back to Eden.
I’m not sure if emotional is even the correct word for this description, but I’ll try it out. I remember a couple years back when Michael DiChiara insisted that I listen intently to this Christmas song by Relient K. As I listend to the words I realized that this conveys my thoughts in the simplest form.
“And the first time
That You opened Your eyes did You realize that You would be my Savior?
And the first breath that left Your lips
Did You know that it would change this world forever?”
“To look back and think that
This baby would one day save me”
“And I, I celebrate the day
That You were born to die
So I could one day pray for You to save my life”
This is a great piece of reflection you have here, but just one piece of historical info: Christmas was actually only celebrated as Christ’s birthday after the Nicean Creed of 381 under Constantine. December 25 was supposedly the birthday of a number of pagan gods (the sun god Mithras among them) and Constantine just appropriated it in order to help with the suppression of pagan religions.
And doesn’t “tending their flocks by night” sort of suggest spring time, rather than the middle of winter, to you?