"She will give birth to a son, and you are to give Him the name Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins."
- An angel to Joseph, Matthew 1:21
The name Jesus means "The Lord saves." The angel instructed Joseph to give Mary's son this name because he would save His people from their sins.
Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard defined sin as seeking to find our identity in anything other than God. He said that sin is not only the doing of bad things, but the making of good things into ultimate things. We are all after something or someone that we hope will define us, fulfill us, make us happy.
The problem is that nothing can accomplish this in our lives. So we wander from relationship to relationship, commodity to commodity, job to job, hoping that the next thing will be the one to give us what our hearts crave.
This is what Jesus came to save us from: the restlessness of sin. He came to save us from the vain wanderings of our hearts that never lead us to that which we seek. He came to save us from sin - the futile attempt to fill the hole in our hearts with anything other than God.
Jesus said, "Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." This Christmas, may our wandering hearts receive Him, and in Him find their salvation, their rest.
I like this, I like it a lot.
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