God didn’t only gift Zechariah with silence; he gifted him with anticipation…His words, moving from doubt to tentative hope, were given inwardly to God alone, who knew his heart better than he did.

Amongst all the busyness…let us not forget to behold Christ our Lord! Don’t let the hustle and bustle of the holiday season keep you from being intentional about focusing your heart on Christ.

There is personal comfort in Christmas. It’s good, but it ought not to end with us. The comfort of Christ is meant to move through his comforted people to a hurting world.

This Christmas season, we need nothing more than to see the meaning of the manger. It offers a sure and certain knowledge that he knows, that he cares, that he saves, and that he will be with us through to the very end, right on into eternity.

Each year, this day marks our Savior’s birth as a human child revered by kings and shepherds. This day ushers divine imagination into our reality.

Through tinsel-coated commercials and gripping seasonal stories, the world’s message is clear: the true magic of Christmas is held by children. But is it true?

Christ entered a dark world. Not the inner-city darkness that fills a room with faint beams of streetlights and occasional headlights flashing as vehicles pass. He entered darkness that you can feel.

He didn’t come when we were strong. While we were still misfits, Christ came to love us.

A life of thanksgiving is available to every one of us. In our consumeristic culture, it will take radical heart change and refocusing our attention, but God is able to do above and beyond all that we can think or ask. But we must ask.

In this excerpt from A Light Has Dawned Meditations on Advent and Christmas (Best of Christianity Today) by Lexham Press, Elisabeth Elliot writes about the mysterious gift of the Incarnation of Christ.

David Mathis considers that joy might be underselling the true glory of Christmas.

On the first week of Advent, Barbara Reaoch gives us some diagnostic questions to discern our Christmas traditions.