4 People:

2 who were looking for Him, were rewarded for their faithfulness.

1 who was not looking for Him but new the Messiah was to come.

1 who was actively persecuting the Church.

These met Jesus and their lives were changed, and they changed lives by telling others of Him.

From fulfilling the law of the firstborn, to Simeon and Anna (Anna being the only prophetess mentioned in the New Testament) The Birth of Christ gets more and more Grand. Then we encounter 12 year old Jesus in the Temple with the Lawyers and Doctors.

Mary, and Elisabeth both have their boys. The Angel proclaims to the Shepherd Unto us is born a Savior. Then a whole multitude show up praising God who has made the redemption of man possible.

God did all this that He might fellowship with us. He wants to spend time with US. Think about that.

Luke writes that Theophilus might know with a certainty that these things are true.

That John the Baptist was indwelt with the Spirit from conception. That Mary was a Virgin that the conception was Immaculate.

He has it from first hand witnesses Peter, John, James, and he was a constant companion of Paul's.

We oohhh and awe at the Baby Jesus.

Do you know that hanging on that cross, naked, suspended before God and man, people walked by, reviling Him, wagging their heads, mocking Him?

Without that death, without the burial and the Resurrection? Then the birth would have been just one more among millions. Just another man, just a prophet. Yet the Resurrection, that gives us Hope, that gives us Life for we are not like other men. We have a Savior alive and well and sitting at the right hand of the Father.

So often we discount Joseph when in actuality, without him, none of the Nativity would be. His faith, his honor is amazing.

He stepped in to be a father, to be a mentor, to the baby. He was a husband to a woman he had to, by faith, trust.

He was a just man, and he was a man of faith.

The Wise men came looking for a child who was born king of the Jews. They travelled from afar guided by the star to the Messiah.

Why did Jesus die for even me? Mystery

Why did God so Love the World? Mystery

Why? A Mystery of the faith! Deepest of the deep Theology.

This is what we should proclaim to a lost and dying world.

Ahab that wicked King. Ahad, there was none like him. Ahab, the one that sold himself to evil in the sight of the Lord. That Ahab has been sentenced to die, and so he shall at Ramoth Gilead.

His time has run out, he has ignored his many chances to repent. God is done.

Ahab is going to battle after the year is up as the Prophet of God had said. God once again says I am going to win this victory that you may know I am the Lord.

Yet Ahab messes up, he lets Benhadad go scot free when it was not his decision. He was not the victor God was.

No Ahab knows remorse.

We have been ransomed, Redeemed. Our lives are not our own. We are physically and Spiritually indebted to God.

Yet we want all the rewards and none of the actual life we should be leading.

This ME ME ME has to stop, we should be worried for the One that bought us with so great a price and with those that are lost and dying.

Not us but Him and them, that should be our thought, our life.