ChristmasReading2022A - Flipbook - Page 26
DAY Twelve: December 09 - Friday
Holiday Harvest Deliveries
While they were there, the me came for the baby to be born, and she
gave birth to her rstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed
him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.
Luke 2:6-7
“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or
a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the
least of these, you did not do for me.’” Ma hew 25:44-45
Such was the entrance of the
Creator into creation. It was as if He
came in disguise.
The incarna on may be the Bible’s greatest mystery; it also surprises
us. Jesus is not born into the world rich, powerful, in uen al or
famous. His parents were poor. The community he grew up in was not
a uent. Years later, Nathanael, when he hears that Jesus is from
Nazareth asks: “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Such
was the entrance of the Creator into crea on. It was as if He came in
disguise.
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Is it any wonder that Jesus iden es with the poor? During the last
week of His life prior to the cruci xion, Jesus tells a parable involving
sheep and goats. One of the iden fying marks of the goats (who are
lost in the parable) is that the way God deals with their spiritual
poverty through grace never translates into their trea ng the poor with
that same graciousness. This will not do in the Kingdom of God. Tony
Campolo writes: “Jesus never says to the poor: ‘come nd the church’,
but he says to those of us in the church: ‘go into the world and nd the
poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned.” Grace is perceived in
graciousness. Grace is sensed in kindness.