Insights Magazine

When done well, one’s family becomes a sacred shelter of consistency and connection in a world of flux and change. At its best, home develops into the safe place where we can always go and be accepted for who we are.

A reporter once asked a couple how they had managed to stay married 65 years. The woman replied, “We were born in a time when if something was broken, we would fix it, not throw it away.”

Traditions are nothing new. In fact, it’s because they’re not new they hold any value whatsoever.

Perhaps you never realized that it was Jesus’ attitude of unselfishness that launched Him from the splendour of heaven all the way down to a humble manger in Bethlehem…and later to the cross of Calvary.

The doctrine of the virgin birth, or perhaps more accurately the virgin conception, is important for many reasons. On it hang the doctrines of original sin, the inspiration of Scripture, who Jesus was, and what Jesus did in salvation.

Unless we view Bethlehem from the perspective of the cross, most of what we sing and celebrate at Christmas amounts to glorying in the cradle, not the cross.

If joy depended on our circumstances, we’d have had an awful year. But we haven’t.