Christmas: The Real Story

REFLECTION QUOTES

“We are perishing for lack of wonder, not for lack of wonders.”

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”

~G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), English writer and journalist

“He Who sits upon the sublime and heavenly Throne, now lies in a manger.
And He Who cannot be touched, Who is simple, without complexity,
and incorporeal, now lies subject to the hands of men.
He Who has broken the bonds of sinners, is now bound by an infant’s bands.”

~Cyril of Alexandria (378-444), Patriarch of Alexandria

“The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man—and the dogma is the drama.”

~Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957), English writer and essayist

“In all my studies of other religions… I never found anything like…that incredible social inversion of Almighty God coming here and living with us and dying with us. And I was very drawn by that—profoundly drawn by it!”

~Anne Rice (1941-present), American author

“Luke’s history [in the Gospel according to Luke] is unsurpassed in regard to its trustworthiness.”

“Luke is an historian [who] should be placed along with the very greatest.”

~Sir William Mitchell Ramsay (1851-1939), Scottish archaeologist

“God’s love is precisely what the first Christians did feel. They had experienced Jesus’ love and had become convinced that Jesus was God incarnate. Once that love reached them, it could not be stopped.”

~Huston Smith, philosophy department chair at MIT (1958-1973)

SERMON PASSAGE

Luke 1:1-4 (NIV)

1 Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3 With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.