Advent Week - Christ

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   For the past six years, our church has hosted a Christmas Eve candlelight service. This tradition actually goes back to when I was deployed to Qatar in 2019. The Christmas Eve service I conducted there, I brought to our church when I returned. The service is simple: the reading of the Christmas story of Luke and Matthew interspersed with the singing of carols and a devotional at the end based on one of the carols. 

   We have added one thing to this that is different from what I conducted in Qatar. At our Christmas Eve service, we light the fifth Advent candle, the Christ candle. One of the things I noticed this year is how over the course of the Advent season, the other four candles burn down, leaving the Christ candle even more prominent than before. In Philippians 2:5-11, the Apostle Paul writes, "Have this attitude in your selves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason, also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed upon Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on the earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

   As we see this year fading like a candle, let us take the time to reflect of the greatness of Christ, and, like the Christ candle that stands out above the other candles of Advent, let us bow before the One who humbled Himself to the point of death on the cross. In this coming year, let us commit to making much of Jesus Christ, who gave so much for us.