Christmas
As we again come upon the celebration of Christmas in the year 2017, I wanted to remind myself and those who read my words of what this season is really all about. We will read the story in our Church this Sunday night at our Christmas Eve Service. We shall again hear that the child is born in a barn, and placed in a feed trough because there was no room in the inn.
But will we hear that there is more to this story than just that a child is born, a Son is given? You see, the birth of the child, fully human baby boy, fully also GOD, is just one part of the story of Christmas. There is a great deal more to this story. There is the death of `100’s of children in Bethlehem 2 years later as the King Herod tries to find and destroy this baby who is the King of Israel in the line of David.
There is the growing up of Jesus in Egypt and in Nazareth in Galilee, becoming a carpenter, experiencing all the stuff that you and I experience. Hurt when you hit the wrong nail with the hammer, pain when a loved one dies, joy when there is celebration at a wedding. All the stuff you and I have in our own lives, happiness and sorrow, pain and suffering, he experienced.
Then, he experienced the worst pain of all, death as a criminal on a Roman Cross outside Jerusalem. That’s right he died a criminals death, because we, yes we humans were all guilty of the crime of rejecting God and His way of living our lives. Not the onerous laws that the Religious elites had stamped on society, no not that way. Jesus taught the truth of the way to live a proper God fearing life:
Mat 22:36-40 ESV “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” (37) And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. (38) This is the great and first commandment. (39) And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (40) On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
We don’t live that way, we see instead hatred, war, and famine, that is not what He came to teach. Since we humans seem to have a propensity to ignore that which we profess to believe, Jesus had to die to save us from our sins. He died for all, but we have to be willing to surrender our lives, our lusts our sins to God in the name of Jesus Christ, and name him as LORD of our lives, in order for us to become new persons in God’s Kingdom.
You see, none of us is perfect, none of us live without sin in our lives, even after we accept the sacrifice for ourselves, we still sin. Jesus lived a sinless life, and therefore he could be our sacrifice. That is what the Christmas story really is all about. Yes it is a wonderful story about the birth of the child in Bethlehem of Judea, and all that goes with that birth. However, without the cross at the end of that life, there is no atonement for sin, we would have no hope.
I wish you all a blessed and Merry Christmas, and I pray that if you do not have a personal relationship with the one who we celebrate at this time, please get right with God. The scripture says: Rom 6:23 ESV For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Freedom of Religion
The 1st Amendment to the Constitution is quite clear in that it states in no uncertain terms that it is aimed at the Federal Government, namely those who write law, the Congress of the United States. It does not stop the states from doing what they wish at Christmas or Easter or any other time of the year.
Yet here it is a city puts up a manger scene on the their property to celebrate the season, and some Grinch group decides they will threaten a lawsuit to stop this blatant move by the city to endorse Christianity. I wish these people would read the Constitution instead of making it say what it does not say.
Amendment 1 “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” That is quite clear and should not be made to say that a state or city or county cannot do what they please in regard to celebrating religion of any kind. Christianity included in that statement, after the ratification of the Bill of Rights, states still had state churches. It wasn’t until later in the 1800’s that States all gave up on State churches.
Just to help out you grinches out there read the 10th Amendment which is a part of the Bill of Rights. It says: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Since Congress does not have the right to mess with our everyday lives in regard to our practice of religion, or peaceful assembly, or the right to petition our Government, nor to mess with the freedom of the press. We the people have that power to ourselves and our States. The other truth is that the news people need to get their act together and begin to report properly on the egregious examples of groups threatening to sue cities and counties, knowing that their bully tactics will make the things they don’t like go away, because the cites and counties don’t have the money to fight the battle.
It is high time that the press written, and broadcast, get their act together and begin to report the truth about these cases, shaming those who bring these lies out knowing that they can bully we the people, and our local governments into capitulation because the socialists are the ones with the so-called power. That is why it is time for term limits in Congress, we need to rid ourselves of lawyers who write the laws and think they are the royalty of our nation and they deserve their positions for 50 or 60 years. 3 terms for the House and 2 terms for Senators.
Support the Constitution Party, they are the ones who want to return our nation to the Republic it was originally founded as. Democracies always end in Chaos, Republics do not. Get rid of the career politicians, and you will get the swamp drained. Get sanity back into our nation, read and teach the Constitution of the United States and practice it in your own lives. You will be the richer for it, hold these grinches accountable, do not let them ruin your Christmas, or Hanukkah. Support the Constitution Party, we believe in term limits, we believe in a free and open society, and we believe that our Constitution is the Law of the Land, and that it has been abandoned by our politicians and the lawyers that suck us dry.
Leave the Dark Side and come over to the Light Side, learn of the true freedom that our Constitution guarantees. It is time to throw the bums out! Elect true Constitutionalists.
My wife and I
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