Christmas Eve (4 of 4)
Series: Love Has Come
Craig Smith
Luke 2:1-19
I. Introduction
Merry Christmas! I am so glad that you're making this time of worship and reflection here at Mission Hills a part of your Christmas celebration. I'm honored and, to be honest, a little intimidated. Christmas Eve might be the hardest message of the year to deliver, mostly because the subject matter is so familiar. I mean, if I told you that Mary was a virgin when she got pregnant with Jesus, nobody's going to go ''what?!'' Or if I said that when she and Joseph got to Bethlehem and she went into labor, she had to put baby Jesus in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn, is anybody going to say ''Get out of here! Seriously?'' It's a pretty familiar story and most of us probably already know most of the details.
Which is a problem, because familiarity doesn't exactly lead to awe, does it? I mean, the more we're familiar with something, the less we're blown away by it, right? I still remember the first time I used Google to look something up and it came back with thousands of pages of information about whatever it was I was looking for. I was blown away...I was in awe. But now...now I'm like, ''do I really have to open a web browser and type in my search? Why doesn't Google already know what I want it to look up? What is this, the 1890s?''
No matter how awesome something is, the more familiar we become with it, the less we feel the awe. When was the last time you pulled a smartphone out of your pocket and went ''this thing is unbelievable''? I mean, we're carrying around more computing power than they used to put men on the moon and mostly what we think is ''I hate my phone!'' Familiarity and awe are mutually exclusive.
And that's the scary thing about the Christmas story: what we are dealing with here is, literally, the most awesome thing that has ever happened...and we're like ''Yeah, yeah, yeah, baby Jesus, manger, shepherd, angels...got it. Tell ...
Series: Love Has Come
Craig Smith
Luke 2:1-19
I. Introduction
Merry Christmas! I am so glad that you're making this time of worship and reflection here at Mission Hills a part of your Christmas celebration. I'm honored and, to be honest, a little intimidated. Christmas Eve might be the hardest message of the year to deliver, mostly because the subject matter is so familiar. I mean, if I told you that Mary was a virgin when she got pregnant with Jesus, nobody's going to go ''what?!'' Or if I said that when she and Joseph got to Bethlehem and she went into labor, she had to put baby Jesus in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn, is anybody going to say ''Get out of here! Seriously?'' It's a pretty familiar story and most of us probably already know most of the details.
Which is a problem, because familiarity doesn't exactly lead to awe, does it? I mean, the more we're familiar with something, the less we're blown away by it, right? I still remember the first time I used Google to look something up and it came back with thousands of pages of information about whatever it was I was looking for. I was blown away...I was in awe. But now...now I'm like, ''do I really have to open a web browser and type in my search? Why doesn't Google already know what I want it to look up? What is this, the 1890s?''
No matter how awesome something is, the more familiar we become with it, the less we feel the awe. When was the last time you pulled a smartphone out of your pocket and went ''this thing is unbelievable''? I mean, we're carrying around more computing power than they used to put men on the moon and mostly what we think is ''I hate my phone!'' Familiarity and awe are mutually exclusive.
And that's the scary thing about the Christmas story: what we are dealing with here is, literally, the most awesome thing that has ever happened...and we're like ''Yeah, yeah, yeah, baby Jesus, manger, shepherd, angels...got it. Tell ...
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