Daily Lesson for Christmas Eve, December 24, 2014

Today's Christmas Eve Lesson is from Luke 1 verses 78 and 79:

78 By the tender mercy of our God,
   the dawn from on high will break upon us, 
79 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
   to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Auden's Christmas Oratorio "For the Time Being" has a stanza that puts into words the wonder and mystery of Incarnation:

"We who must die demand a miracle.
How could the Eternal do a temporal act,
The Infinite become a finite fact?
Nothing can save us that is possible:
We who must die demand a miracle."

The message of Christmas is that when we could not possibly save ourselves God came to save us. The miraculous happened:

A light-filled star appeared from nowhere and nothing in the night sky.

A virgin conceives.

He who is beyond time stepped into time.

He who is spirit took on flesh.

God became a child. 

In the words of the great church father Irenaeus, "God became like what we are so that we might become like what He is."

Jesus means "God saves".  In the end nothing can save us from the darkness and shadows of sin and death than God alone. Only a miracle can save us; and thank God a miracle has!

Radiant beams from Thy holy face
With the dawn of redeeming grace,
Jesus, Lord at Thy birth.
Jesus, Lord at Thy birth.