An unlikely Christmas text
Friday, December 22nd, 2006A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.
Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born.
She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne (Revelation 12.1-5).
From the people of God came forth the Messiah. From the moment of his birth, Satanic forces strove for his destruction. The vision answers our question: Where is the Christ? Not in a manger. Not even on a cross. He is at the right hand of God.
As Peterson wrote in Reversed Thunder, this text reminds us…
that the nativity cannot be sentimentalized into coziness, nor domesticated into drabness, nor commercialized into worldliness…
Merry Christmas, my Kingdom friends.
