This Christmas, Connect With God

Amidst all the Christmas blog posts that I have read recently, there seems to be one thing lacking: specific focus on what the birth of Jesus means and how it effects our lives in the here and now. There is MUCH talk of how Jesus was born for the sole purpose of dying on the cross to atone for our sins (I’ll deal with that one later), of how He was born in a manger, of how Mary was a virgin when He was born. But there is precious little on how Jesus’ birth is life-changing now in the present day.

The birth of Jesus in the turning point in history. At Jesus, traditionally speaking, BCE (Before Common Era, formerly BC) became CE (Common era, formerly AD). Time is measured differently at this point. It goes backwards and then, at the coming of Messiah, moves forward. I’m sure there is something to say on that point, but I’ll leave it alone for now.

Jesus’ birth is important for many other reasons. I believe the most important to be, though, that, at Jesus, the door began to open giving us all free access to the Lord God. The Supreme God. King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Connecting With God (Part 1)

And Isaac went out to meditate in the field toward evening. (Genesis 24:63a ESV)

There is something deeply mystical about the Christian faith, or there should be. Sometimes I wonder how we got so far from this idea. We treat Scripture, and therefore God, as if it can all fit neatly in an outline or a system. We think we can summarize all there is to know about the faith in a few volumes of what we deem as “Systematic Theology.”

The systematic study of God. That makes God sound like He is an organism that we can pick apart and dissect and study and eventually fully understand. And we are completely satisfied with this kind of god. He’s safe. He’s fathomable. Our words can describe him. He’s omnipotent and omniscient and omnipresent and omnicompitent and omni-whatever-else-we-want-to-make-him.