Advent Reading Guide - To You, From Above
By Bethel Church
To You, From Above
It’s hard to think of Christmas without thinking of gifts. If you close your eyes and think back to your earliest memories of Christmas, perhaps there’s a tree, some family, a hazy detail of food. Most likely, though, you can remember clear as day the feeling of excitement when you discovered a gift had your name on it.
We call this feeling, “nostalgia.” It’s the feeling we have when we recall fond memories of past moments in life. Strangely, nostalgia was first observed and named by an army doctor in the 17th century who noticed troops unable to function because they were yearning for the comforts of home. Using two Greek words, nostos (to return home) and algos (pain), he dubbed their condition nostalgia: the longing to go back home.
It’s fitting that our memories of Christmas are classified as nostalgia. Because of all the gifts that we consider at Christmas, the gift of Jesus Christ is the only gift that has the power to bring us to our true home. Embedded within our memories of the season is a longing for this gift that brings us home. Jesus is the gift that moves us. The prophets in the Old Testament foretold the coming Messiah who would move God’s people back home. The Psalms celebrate the God who comes down to earth. The Gospels record the miraculous truth that God wrapped himself in flesh, lived among us, and died on a Roman cross so that we might be moved from death to life, from darkness to light, from blindness to sight, and from guilt to freedom. Of course, the ultimate movement that the gift of Jesus offers us is the movement from earth to glory. Jesus came from heaven to earth, so that we might one day be with him in glory. We can move from death to life only because he came from heaven to earth. To us, from above.
May you cherish the wonder of God born to us this season,
The Pastors of Bethel Church
Download the Advent Reading Guide Here
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