Monday, January 10, 2011
John 20:31 ... this book [is] written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.
"WHAT CHILD IS THIS?"
Christmas songs are still in the air at our house. And there's every reason they should be. Epiphany is actually part of the Christmas season. For Epiphany means revealing ... and during Epiphany Christians have long rejoiced in the Scripture revelation of the answer to that age-old Christmas question: "What Child is this?"
It's like unwrapping a Christmas present -- the gift of God's own Son -- and finding the gift to be more wonderful than you imagined possible. The Evangelist John's entire Gospel was written with such an "unwrapping" in mind.
And what John lays out in detail in 21 chapters he also sums up in just 18 sublime verses in his prologue to the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to John. May God the Holy Spirit, the great Revealer of Jesus, enlighten our hearts anew.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it" (John 1:1-4).
Of the Father's love begotten
Ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega,
He the Source, the Ending He,
Of the things that are, that have been,
And that future years shall see
Evermore and evermore.
(The Lutheran Hymnal, 98:1)
