<\/p>\n
The Christmas holiday is nearly upon us. For many people Christmas is a special day filled with family gatherings, gift exchanges, and other holiday traditions. In my own family, we look forward to these times, and we enjoy telling others about all the ways we are celebrating this week.<\/p>\n
But what are we really celebrating? To answer this question, we might point to all of our traditions, and it\u2019s easy to overlook the big-picture story that provides the whole reason for this holiday. In today\u2019s Bible passage, the apostle Paul reminds Timothy about Jesus\u2019 appearance \u201cin the flesh\u201d and how this should shape our words and behavior as his followers.<\/p>\n
The great truth of the Christian faith, the reality that shapes our celebration and our living, is that the Son of God has become human, just like us, so that he can save us. Christmas proclaims to the world that God has come near to live among us and restore us to his glory. So, as great as our traditions may be, the work of God provides an even greater reason for celebrating this holiday.<\/p>\n
Our passage for today challenges us to remember what we actually celebrate. So as we tell people about the traditions we are enjoying this week, let\u2019s be sure also to share about the true reason to celebrate: that God has appeared in the flesh for our salvation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Christmas holiday is nearly upon us. For many people Christmas is a special day filled with family gatherings, gift exchanges, and other holiday traditions. In my own family, we look forward to these times, and we enjoy telling others about all the ways we are celebrating this week. But what are we really celebrating?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13456,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[195,86,269,660,181],"class_list":["post-13455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-devotionals","tag-big","tag-daily","tag-devotional","tag-story","tag-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}