The song, I'll be Home for Christmas is perhaps one of the inner longings that many people have as the holiday season approaches. For many who are far away from their home and loved ones they, more than anyone else, can appreciate this wonderful old song. In thinking about Christmas this year and that song, I am reminded of a story in the Bible that tells of a poor wretch that was far from his home and family. As a matter of fact the scriptures tell us that the man had fixed his home among the tombs in a graveyard, where he dwelt day and night. This man had been possessed with a legion of evil spirits that had driven him to madness and was the terror of all who passed by him. At some point the local authorities had attempted to control him by binding him with irons and chains. But out of his madness and unwillingness to be controlled, he overcame the irons and chains, and roamed naked and aimlessly, in his personal torment. This man was a misery to himself as well as a burden to his community. He was in constant mental pain and torment roaming around aimlessly night and day throughout the hills, crying fearfully, cutting himself with sharp flints of stone, torturing his poor body in the most frightful ways.
Then one day the Son
of the Living God passed by him and said to the evil spirits that were
possessing his mind, to come out of him; and the
man was healed in that moment. As Jesus got into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged Jesus, that he might go with
Him. But Jesus did not permit him, but told him to go home to his friends
and tell them what great things that Jesus had done
for him, and about the compassion that Jesus had for and on him. What Jesus wanted the
man to understand was that he was given a new purpose in life now. That he had received the most precious gift, which was spiritual
freedom. The peace that the world longs for and sings
about today had entered the heart of the man that had been captive by demonic sin
and set free to live and serve the one who had delivered him from his bondage. Jesus knew that the man could be more effective among
those that knew him when he was out of his mind and now saw him in the delivered condition that he was in. His testimony would take the gospel to places that Jesus
Himself may not have visited.
It is
a great delusion to think that we are islands to ourselves. For that way of
thinking causes us to be an enemy of the true purpose of spreading the gospel.
The kind of Christianity that Christ imparted to that man that day is the kind
of Christianity that makes a husband a better husband, a wife a better wife. It
does not free us from our duties as children, it makes us better children,
better parents, better families. Instead of weakening our love for one another,
it gives us a fresh reason for our affection towards one another. It was never
meant to interfere with relationships, but was intended to cement them and to
make them so strong that death itself cannot sever.
I wish it were Christmas
every day in the year if it would help us have more opportunity to come
together and share with friends and family the good news of what Christ has
done for us. If you have never taken the opportunity at Christmas or any
holiday to do so, as this coming Christmas time rolls around again, let me
encourage you to do the same thing that Jesus told the man in this
story to do when he said, "Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the
Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee." Mark 5:19. For
the Christian, Christmas is all about Christ coming to set captives free and in
the life of the man spoken about in Mark chapter 5, he found out for himself
the true meaning of Christmas the day Christ set him free.
Keeping Christ in Christmas,
Bren
No comments:
Post a Comment