One of my favorite passages is Isaiah 28:27-28.
…caraway is beaten with a rod, and cummin with a stick. Grain must be ground to make bread…”
Do you ever feel like the caraway, the cummin, and the grain in this verse?
Do you ever feel like life is beating you with a stick? Like you are being ground to pieces?
Do you ever feel like all the world is against you? Like nothing goes your way? Like even God has turned away from you?
You have financial problems, and health problems, marital problems, family problems, job problems, car problems, and on and on it goes.
Joseph and Mary faced many of these troubles as well, and they had the added pressure of being the parents of the promised Messiah. Imagine that burden!
Yet as they faced their troubles and obeyed God, He sent angels and shepherds and wise men to welcome the birth of their son.
Just as with Mary and Joseph, troubles and trials in life are tools in the hand of God to mold us and shape us and make us into something beyond our imagination. When trials and troubles come into your life, you may feel like you are getting beaten with rods and ground into powder, but as Isaiah 28 says, grain must be ground to make bread.
God is making you into something great. In whatever trials you are facing, ask God these kinds of questions: Say, “Father, what are you trying to teach me in this situation? How can this trial make me more like Jesus Christ? What chaff in my life are you trying to grind out of me? How can this troubling time make me better instead of bitter?”
God wants to change your troubles into trumpets if you will only let him perform His work in you.
(This Christmas meditation is drawn from a sermon on Luke 2:1-20 I preached several years ago when I was a pastor. For more Christmas meditations, see Scriptures on Christmas.)
Well said. I think another encouraging thing is that Jesus and the apostles promise that we will we experience hard times, persecution, etc. This is always a great reminder as it’s so easy to just go about our lives sometimes thinking it’s all about our comfort.
Quincy,
Right. Especially in modern countries with all our conveniences. We think a “hard day” is getting stuck in traffic for an hour and then having our boss yell at us for being late.
We think persecution is being asked to work on a Sunday.
Great post.
I hav found this so freeing. That in all my troubles that I may be going through God is right there with me and will be using these trying times to stengthen my faith in Him and my relationship with Him.
Glad to hear it, Adam. Those trying times are the times we grow and strengthen the most.
Dear Sandor, dates and times have ways been difficult to sort out but I agree that Jesus was probably born in September and visited later than the the nativity narrative would have it. I also think that the slaughterof all children under 2 gives even more evidence to this idea that a great deal of time had lapsed between the various events. I’m sure after the initial busyness, Joseph would have found somewhere to rent until such time that he was warned to flee to Egypt, Jesus could quite easily have been a year or so old.
I don’t believe the Bible was ever supposed to have been a minute by minute day by day happenings, but more about what happened. We in the West are fixated about time whereas the people in those times followed seasons and moon phases. Some may say that Jesus was born 2011 years ago but the reality is that we have to give or take a couple of years. Historians need to try and get it correct as they relate other events in history that were happening at the time. For example which Herod was on the throne, Luna movements, the Star, was there a commet that was doing it’s cycle. These things are important as it brings authenticity to the narrative. When I became a follower of Jesus I just knew the truth as it really did set me free. The rest is mearly a confirmation of that truth. Clive
While understanding the main point of the article, I wish to add that, in my view, wise men came to see baby Jesus about six months after His birth, at Passover time, not necessarily in Bethlehem, Jesus being in a house and not in a manger. To my knowledge, there’s only one reliable source of information about the true Nativity Story at present, namely the respective part of the “How Could Jesus Spend Three Days and Three Nights in the Tomb?” (available at Faithreaders). Luke 2:41 says: “Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the passover.” This Gospel verse is the CLUE. What even the Pope doesn’t know (if this is a yardstick), Jesus was born on 26 September, 4 BCE, at 3pm(!), which is duly evidenced in the above (as are several issues you may not know). Wise men visited Him around the end of March, 3 BCE. Many may claim this is not important for our salvation. I think it is, since the chronology of the nativity story are closely related to the death and resurrection of Jesus, i. e the sign of Jonah, the only sign Jesus gave. Over 4,500 (thank be to God!)have viewed the above and I hope more and more Christians will read and consider it.
Dear Sandor I have just accessed your writings and found them interesting. There was so much information there that I had to return several times to what I had previously read, in the end I had to browse and glean. In spite of all the information I found that there were several assumptions which left holes in your arguments. Essays of the type you have written put me off reading them as I personally find them pedantic. I believe you are genuinely searching for the truth, yet at times I wondered if you were having a go at the established beliefs of the Church just to prove them wrong. I do agree that the Church does keep their cards close to their chest as they see us lot as to weak to receive the truth, to me it always have been a form of control and I wont have anything to do with it, so I don’t blame you for having a pop at them. What did concern me was that you seemed to assume your assumptions were correct. Now I feel that I’m having a pop at you.
I have always been a searcher of the truth as you are, may be the difference is, that if I don’t know for certain I don’t labour the point. You did ask the rhetorical question “does the detail really matter” you think it’s essential I don’t. You may if you wish call my faith a blind one, that does not bother me as I know my redeemer liveth.
I would enjoy reading more of your stuff, but it would have to be less pedantic in the way it is written, if it was, I think you would receive an even larger audience. But there again what do I know.
Clive
Dear Clive, Thank you for having taken the trouble to read my writings and for your feedback. As you may have established, I’m not a native speaker, thus my writings (not my posts but my articles) are checked by one of my English friends, being an English teacher. I don’t feel ‘authorised’ to make any modifications in the text he has checked and proofread. I’m really glad to have your criticism and will try to adopt your advices for the future. My book is less pedantic, less formal and less scholarly. Please read some excerpts from it if you may be interested. I think I understand what you may also mean by “pedantic”. Accuracy, in my view, is divine. Just think of the narrow range of ambient temperatures God’s providing for us and of the miniature and gigantic organisms. Think of God having determined the events even in Noah’s days (why was that necessary so long ago?), taking the days, months and years of age of Noah and not solar or lunar days, no sun and moon and stars existing at that time (pls read another article by me: “The Origin of the Universe, the Earth and of Life on Earth”) as a basis. I think accuracy is divine and important. An example: the presumed and mistranslated slaughter of (as you say: “all children” under 2 – it was only about “boys”, little girls excluded) little boys under and incl. of 2 years of age actually didn’t happen, as you can read in my “How Could Jesus …?”. Thank you once again for your precious reading time, Clive. Blessings, Sandor
Dear Sandor thank you for your considered reply I noted a few of your writings and will endevor to read them when I get the opportunity. I did not think the English was a problem just too much detail for me, others will love it. As you say not all detail is available, yet, when we are born again from a worldly secular mind, Gods Holy Spirit confirms the Truth not only of scripture but the explanations to our searchings.
May The Lord continue to reveal even more of Himself to us and the world, even to the new leader of North Korea, that he and his people will be set free. Have a joyful Christmas. Love Clive.
Dear Clive,
Please accept my best wishes and feel free to write me at any time. Blessings to you and yours. Sandor
Clive and Sandor,
Great discussion. You did not know it at the time of this post, but I had a post already written and scheduled for the following day about the birth of Jesus, and I argue similarly that Jesus was born in late September. I believe similarly that the wisemen came many months later.
Of course, I go on to say in that article that the date of the birth doesn’t matter so much. What matters is the reason Jesus came.