Good News of Great Joy

At 8:20 a.m. on Christmas morning twenty-four years ago, with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer playing quietly on the radio in the background and snow falling lightly outside the window, Tressa made her dramatic entry into our lives. For twenty-four years, December 25 has been a birthday as well as Christmas at the Tucker home. When you have a Christmas baby, you have to go to at least some trouble to separate the two events. Over the years, we have come up with some very specific rules that we are expected to follow—

• Fruit cake cannot be used as birthday cake!
• You can never combine Christmas and birthdays gifts;
• And you must never wrap a birthday present in Christmas paper!
  

Christmas birthdays make life complicated. But then at least I never have any trouble remembering Tressa’s birthday!

Things were a little complicated on Jesus’ birthday too. OK, He likely wasn’t literally born on December 25, but there was nothing ordinary about Jesus’ birthday whenever it was.

• He was conceived by God and born of a virgin;
• He was born in a barn and placed in a feed trough;
• And what other baby receives gold, frankincense and myrrh?

And Jesus’ birth announcement came from heaven and not Hallmark! Angels brought to the shepherds “good news of great joy.” That is an interesting choice of words. In fact, the word the angels use here is one of the most familiar words in all the Bible - the word “gospel.” What the angel literally said was, “I preach to you a gospel of great joy.” The birth of Jesus is gospel!

There will never be peace on earth and universal goodwill toward men. Two thousand years of human experience have taught that the coming of Jesus into the world did not bring the world total peace. But that was never the angelic announcement in the first place! What the angels announced was, “on earth let there be peace among the people who please God” (Luke 2:14, CEV). We can have peace with God because Jesus allows us to please God. Jesus is our peace. Because He was born, lived, died, and rose again we have peace.