The calendar says it is December 18th, but I stepped outside today and could have sworn it was June! Went for a run in shorts and a t-shirt and met with a friend for coffee in capris! Pretty crazy as Christmas quickly approaches. With that, most of our kids left town about a week ago. I miss them a lot. I am excited for where we finished up this semester though. I feel God has us in a good spot going into break to continue on in the spring semester. Our kids are growing like weeds, thirsty for fellowship and even more so for the Word of God. He is so faithful and good. Also a HUGE praise in that we **might** have a worship leader!!!!!! A guy saw one of our pastor's LTGs when they were meeting and asked if he could join them. Who does that, right?! :) He and his wife have come to church the past few weeks and he just happens to be a worship leader!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They haven't commited to Crossway just yet, and might take a little longer to bring into a leadership position like that, but we serve a BIG God and He is moving in such absolutely ridiculous ways!!!! Praise Him for several families He has brought to Crossway over the past month!!!
Back to our students, they came back from Thanksgiving break, and it was pretty much a whirlwind of studying and cramming in a few Christmas activities before they are gone again. Me and my Bible study girls went ice skating during finals week... a much needed study break for them... haha! We have such a studious bunch that we have to tear them away from the books sometimes... kind of an interesting dilemma to deal with. A sweet time just reflecting on the semester and Christmas and having fun together...lots of laughs. Also, a crew of us went up to Raleigh for a Shane and Shane/Phil Wickham/Bethany Dillon Christmas Concert. Wow! It was, in a word, fantasmalistic! Just a sweet time to focus on this season, a season that gets so easily caught up in gifts and parties and doing this, that, and the other.
CHRISTmas. God's gift to all of mankind. A Savior for all people. I am reading through John and don't think it is any coincidence that as we approach Christmas, I have reached Holy Week in the gospel of John. "You can't understand the manger without understanding the cross." The theme of Matt's sermon this past Sunday. This year, this simple truth has hit me like never before. God's greatest gift, His greatest sacrifice, a lamb for us. This past weekend in children's I was talking to the kids about the star. I asked them why we celebrate Christmas, and many of them said Jesus. Prompting them for a little more about why a huge star might announce the birth of this baby 2000 years ago, one little boy looked up straight into my eyes and said, "He took our punishment." Such simplicity. Born to die. "I celebrate the day that You were born to die so that one day I could pray for You to save my life"
And then, another testimony shared at church. The God who made the stars and knows them all by name, who made me and you in all of our intricacies, who called up the mountains and set the seas in motion, THAT GOD, that God wants to have a relationship with me? "That's cool! I want that" in Serg's words. But yes, the God of every piece of the universe, who brought it forth from nothing with a word, humbled himself to a tiny babe born in a manger to a young girl betrothed to a lowly carpenter. She held Him, nursed Him, fed Him, cared for Him like any other child...when He was the all knowing, all powerful, sovereign God. God, who knew Mary and Joseph before the beginning of time, entered and humbled himself just in becoming one of us. Can you imagine? But even more so, my Jesus died on a cross after making claims of being God and backing them up with miracles the world had never seen. Three days later, He conquered death. The power to conquer death, the humility to offer that to all of humanity, the love to bring us into intimate relationship with our Creator, that is what is lying in the manger this Christmas season, the greatest gift to each and every one of us.
