Category Archives: Christmas Day

The Great War’s Amazing Christmas Truce

24 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by in Charles Wesley, Christmas, Christmas Carol, Christmas Day, Jesus Christ

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‘Twas the night before Christmas, 1914 — the first Christmas of what was to become known as the First World War.

On the renowned annual Eve when many civilians everywhere in warmth and comfort usually celebrate “Peace on earth, good will to men,” it was just another bitterly cold night along the Front around Ypres, in West Flanders, Belgium. But as the evening grew darker and colder, a miracle took place. After raging on for five months straight, the gunfire stopped. Soldiers on both sides of the armed conflict set aside their weapons, crawled out of the frozen muck of their trenches, if only temporarily, and met face to face in No Man’s Land, the area between the two enemy-held lines which neither side wished to cross or seize fearing the certainty of being blown to pieces in the process.

Allied soldiers actually exchanged Yuletide greetings, “gifts” of rations, and cigarettes with their German counterparts. They drank schnapps in dented tin cups and sang “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht” (“Silent Night, Holy Night”), caroling together in alternating languages. Some accounts of the event even say that a soccer game or two were played in the bloodstained mud, sidestepping shell holes and debris, until the ball deflated when it hit a barbed wire entanglement.

A certain Corporal John Ferguson recorded that “We shook hands, wished each other a Merry Xmas and were soon conversing as if we had known each other for years. [The rest] of our company, hearing that I and some others had gone out, followed us . . . What a sight — little groups of Germans and British extending almost the length of our front! Out of the darkness we could hear laughter and see lighted matches, a German lighting a Scotchman’s cigarette and vice versa, exchanging cigarettes and souvenirs. Everyone seemed to be getting on nicely. Here we were laughing and chatting to men whom only a few hours before we were trying to kill!”

With guns gone silent and soldiers risking courts-martial, this unusual and unofficial truce endured for a night and a day, much to the dismay of their commanding officers, who were after all, there to get on with the destruction of nations. Eventually the spirit of Christmas, the fraternity, the hope all evaporated and the madness of war again took hold of the Western Front, where quiet would not return until November 11, 1918. The cost of peace that day involved far more than a few packs of cigarettes and a flask of brandy. More than eight million lives had been lost and many more wounded for the sake of a political realignment of Europe’s national geography.

Although it lasted but for a few hours on the ever-unfolding calendar of human history, the Trêve de Noël or Christmas Truce of 1914 brought precious moments of peace to the world on a narrow stretch of land ripped apart by savagery. Somehow, Christmas broke through. Now 100 years after the so-called War to End All Wars failed to do so, another Christmas is about to be observed across a globe still desperate for a reprieve from everything that deprives us of truly lasting inner peace.

It is possible, however, for nations, for families and individual hearts to receive the seemingly elusive “Tidings of comfort and joy” of Christmastime if we would but believe the lyrics of Charles Wesley’s classic hymn, Hark! the Herald Angels Sing. Declaring “Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled,” his renowned carol tells us the simple “what and how” of Christmas peace: redemption through Jesus Christ, born the Prince of Peace, God’s loving gift of peace to us, clothed in human form.

This year, don’t let the wonderful miracle of Christmas Day be forgotten on December 26. The angelic message about a Savior told to shepherds and the whole world long ago is an ongoing reality, just as true today as it was then, continuing to transform lives and calm troubled hearts. Let’s sing it together.
Hail the heav’n born prince of peace!
Hail the Son of righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings
Ris’n with healing in His wings
Mild He lays His glory by
Born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth
Born to give them second birth
Hark! The herald angels sing
“Glory to the newborn King!”

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The Prince of Peace is a Warrior

25 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by in Christmas, Christmas Day, Jesus Christ, Life and death, Messiah, Prophecy

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Every Christmas season you can count on some variation of a nativity scene to make its annual appearance, pulled out of a storage box in the closet onto someone’s family room tabletop or a life-sized version all aglow welcoming church goers to holiday services.

Looking at “the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay” one might not think about spiritual warfare as an aspect of an “all is calm, all is bright” Christmas. It seems incongruous — that is, until we look at the whole picture. Thirty-three years later, the long-awaited savior, “born of a virgin” (Isaiah 7:14) “in the city of Bethlehem” (Micah 5:2), had fulfilled hundreds of additional Messianic prophesies about his life, death and resurrection, the earliest being found in Genesis 3:15. God tells the serpent, who had just beguiled Adam and Eve into sin, that One is coming Who will “crush your head.” Thus the battle began. The alarm was sounded, echoing around heaven and earth and to all who revel in darkness: My Anointed is coming. Coming to rescue and reconcile, to renew what was lost and broken, and to defeat the enemy of our souls and even death itself. Isaiah’s prophesied Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6) is just as much a warrior. (Isaiah 42:13)

“The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil,” 1 John 3:8 reports. In plain terms then, Christmas celebrates the much anticipated arrival of God’s own Son to ransom the captives, advance His kingdom and take back what the enemy stole away. (Isaiah 61:1-3) That sounds like warfare to me. Revelation 13:8 states the Lamb of God was “slain from the foundation of the world.” Long before Adam even fell, the rescue mission was ready to roll out, “in the fullness of time.” (Galatians 4:4)

So this season, in the midst of all the bright lights and candles, carols and shopping, all the baking and decorating and gift giving, maybe we should remember that from the day of His conception, Jesus was on a seek and save, search and destroy mission on our behalf so that we might declare “thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Corinthians 15:57)

I wish all my readers the best Spirit-filled Christmas ever. May you recognize that a foreshadowing of the cross was cast upon the manger crib at that first nativity, and that the Christmas Story is fulfilled at Calvary. But it doesn’t end there. For those who believe, the story never ends. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16) One of my favorite Christmas carols is Charles Wesley’s “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” It includes the lyrics “God and sinners reconciled.” That’s the gospel message in a nutshell, the “Good News.” May you find comfort and joy in that realization today. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

*The artwork featured is from a 6th Century mosaic in a chapel in Ravenna, Italy, titled Christ the Warrior. 

Headline: Baby Boy Born To Save World

24 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by in Christmas, Christmas Day, Jesus Christ, Messiah, politics, Prophecy, religion

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For Americans, this has been a year of politics at its worst in campaigning for the highest office in the land. Millions of dollars were spent just to seize a four-year long opportunity to occupy that renowned chair in the White House as Chief Executive of the most powerful country on earth.

This Christmas season then especially as I read again what the prophet Isaiah wrote 600 years before the birth of Jesus Christ, I can’t help but see an obvious contrast between what men – or women – will do for a position of power versus how God operates in expressing His rightful ultimate authority. “For 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.” (Isaiah 9:6 KJV) Sound familiar? Handel included this verse in perhaps one of the most famous of choruses in his 1741 Messiah oratorio. Chances are you have or will hear it on the radio or at a church service. There are enough theological statements in this scripture to contemplate and write a book or two about, but for today, the phrase that speaks to me concerns the government being on His shoulder. It’s a metaphor of course, a symbolic and very visual representation of a real circumstance yet to be realized.

Think about it. The same shoulder that bore the cross up the bloody road to Calvary will carry the glorious weight of governing the nations of the world, no longer the enterprise of either good or evil men. He will reign in righteousness on the throne of David with a scepter of compassion in one hand and a rod of iron in the other. And so will be fulfilled another messianic prophecy: “He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths. He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation nor will they train for war anymore.” (Is. 2:3-4)

But as for now, as it has been for countless centuries, the world remains full of suffering people, especially in the lands of the Bible. The solution to conflict and war will not come from a political party’s agenda, or a UN resolution, or even from the good will of well-intentioned religious men. What we need now more than ever is the Prince of Peace. But His appearance will come at a great expense. It means that the almighty creator of the universe would lay down His divine rights and become like His creation, in the form of a helpless child, born in a hostile land occupied by a brutal Roman Empire; and it ultimately would cost His innocent life as a sacrificed lamb for the sins of the world. There will be a cost required also for his followers: If you want to be my disciples, He said, deny yourself, take up your own cross and then you can follow Me.

In a couple weeks, on the steps of the capitol building in Washington, D.C., a change of administration will take place. Like so many others before him, a president-elect will swear the oath of office and a new perspective on how this United States should be governed will begin to take shape. Sooner or later, though, the long foretold epiphany of the most momentous transition of all time will finally be accomplished. It will be apocalyptic – the commencement of an everlasting government, the kingdom of God in power and glory on earth – so much more ambitious than any human effort to build a novus ordo seclorum, boasted about on our dollar bills; and far outlasting famed Egyptian and Chinese dynasties, it will be forever, not a proposed mere thousand year Reich.

A foreshadowing, a hint of this transition from man’s way back to God’s way has already begun, long ago on that silent and holy night in a little town called Bethlehem, in a stable, in a manger. As Isaiah wrote, a child is given, the Son of God, to save the world, to bring us long sought-after and longed for peace.

This is truly good news! It should be every newspaper’s headline. Or Breaking News on CNN and Fox News. Remember what the angel told the shepherds: “Fear not: for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.” Luke 2:10-11 (KJV) Even Charlie Brown has heard about it! Like Linus said on stage to the Peanuts gang after quoting it, “That’s what Christmas is all about.”

To all my readers, I wish you a Merry Christmas, and express my sincerest hope that during this festive but often stressful season you will find comfort in the message of the herald angel to you personally. As the old carol says,

“God rest you merry gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay.
Remember Christ our Savior
Was born on Christmas Day;
To save us all from Satan’s power
When we were gone astray.
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy.”

Merry Christmas to all!

25 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by in Christmas, Christmas Carol, Christmas Day, Jesus Christ, Messiah, Prophecy

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Of all the scripture verses quoted today concerning the birth of Christ, I especially like the passage celebrated so enthusiastically in a segment of Handel’s spirited composition of The Messiah. It’s from Isaiah 9:6-7

“For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;

And the government will rest on His shoulders;
And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor,
Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace,
On the throne of David and over his kingdom,

To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness

From then on and forevermore.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this.”

That child has been born to us, the Son of God is given – the babe in a manger over 2,000 years ago. But the rest of the prophecy is yet to come, and I can hardly wait. The “government on His shoulders” is a vivid metaphor to describe how this fallen, broken and lost world needs the rule and reign of One who is unaffected by politics, greed, or selfish agendas.

Heaven and earth collide so sweetly and softly in precious baby Jesus, but a day is coming when the collision will be a violent explosion of the wrath of God against wickedness and all those who oppose His authority. It’s a given. “The zeal of the Lord will accomplish this” is a promise. And so heaven and earth will ultimately be one. God’s version of justice and righteousness will triumph forever, from the literal throne of David. The Prince of Peace whose birth we celebrate today will bring the dawning of a new day full of light and joy, shining from the glory of Himself. This makes my Christmas Day doubly special. How ‘bout you?