Roses of Grace

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!  Last week, we talked about how the holiday season is a good time to remember how far the Lord has brought you . That's not all the remembering you get to do this time of year, though! Christmas is also a time to slow down and think about the Incarnation.  It's a really powerful mystery. We can't understand the full significance of God becoming man—we can't understand the incredible humility Jesus showed in lowering himself so much, the glory of that night, or just how important the Incarnation is for our salvation.  There's a lot to be said about it, and a lot gets said around Christmas time. But right now let's focus on just one aspect of the Incarnation: the prophecies throughout the Old Testament, and how they prove that the Bible is completely true and trustworthy.    The Prophecies You've probably heard them already this Christmas season. Many Messianic prophecies are commonly read this time of year—passages like I...

A few weeks ago, we put up our Christmas tree. It was only a few days after Thanksgiving, which is as it should be—though I'm sure that those of you who start the Christmas season before Thanksgiving are perfectly lovely people regardless. 😉 Anyway, we usually get a live tree from a local farm, and we decorated it with all the ornaments we had in the attic. Looking at the ornaments is one of my favorite things to do. We have such a wide variety of them that it's really entertaining to go through the boxes, and it brings back a lot of old memories—a ballet shoe picture frame ornament that I used to put hand-drawn "art" in, for instance, or the set of silver, pink, and green mushrooms with sparkles on the top.  I'm sure you have ornaments that bring back a lot of memories for you when you look at them, so you know what I'm talking about. And decorating our tree this year was a very interesting experience. It made me think a lot about the traditions around Chri...