Christmas Is About Bringing Odd People Together! By Kelly Durant 12-11-22
Psalm 68:6 God sets the solitary in families; He brings out those who are bound into prosperity; But the rebellious dwell in a dry land.
2. Sometimes I feel very sad for many people! You and I can all observe that there are a lot of people out there that have very few friends! They often don’t have any family nearby either! Often my wife and I will get a call from someone, can you take me to the hospital, can you take me to work? Can you help me move because I’m getting evicted? Too many people are very alone in this world!
We are here to serve one another in love and not let our right hand know what our left had is doing but I am shocked and saddened over the poverty of many people! It is a poverty not so much of a lack of food or money, but a poverty of having no friends or family! It’s sad when no one is willing to do anything for another, right? But God makes us meet people we normally wouldn’t meet!
Thank God Christmas can change this! Christmas is all about giving and receiving, and in supporting each other, in supporting strangers you may never even meet either! This happens when people buy gifts to donate to children. The kings gave gifts to Jesus but the gift of Maria and Joseph getting to make friends and meet new strangers such as the kings and the shepherds was what made it all special.
3. The first strange encounter that Mary had was with the angel that told her she would bear a child by the Holy Spirit. Of course, messengers, such as angels, do not stick around for you to make friendships with, but Christmas would not be what it is without the sudden appearance of the angels. Christmas connected us humans with God’s angels, and that is a rare thing we must value!
The shepherds got to see all of the angels in heaven as well. 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: Luke 2:14 “Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!” 15 So it was, when the angels had gone away from them into heaven, that the shepherds said to one another, “Let us now go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us.”
So, the first ones on the first Christmas got to meet angels! Have you ever wondered how many people have been angels to people they didn’t know at all? This happens at Christmas time. Christmas has inspired many people to act as angels, to be messengers of the good news of the arrival of Jesus, and be generous to help people with gifts, and they are helping people they do not even know.
4. Another unusual uniting of people was that of the shepherds meeting Joseph and Mary. This divine couple was chosen by God to raise the savior of the world, but they were nothing more than small town folks whose friendships probably did not extend any further than with their neighbors and family nearby.
So now they are making new friendships with the shepherds who live outside the city. Imagine a bunch of strangers arriving after your baby is born saying we have come here to this barn door to see you and to worship the newborn child?! It must have surprised them for sure!
Mary and Joseph made new friends that night! These were humble folks, and they were humble as well. What they had in common was they both experienced something heavenly and supernatural, and they both were aware that a chosen special child was born, Jesus the Christ.
5. The next characters to appear on the scene were the kings of the Orient, the wise men. Think about this, these men were strangers and did not know each other until they met each other in Bethlehem after their long journey. They probably did not speak the same language, but they did have the same purpose in common, to meet Jesus! Here we see it again, Jesus is uniting people together.
They then went on to meet Mary, Joseph, and Jesus by following the unexplained phenomena of the star over Jesus’ temporary residence. These kings would never have left home and travelled for months had they not been on a spiritual mission to see the mystery at the end of their journey. They wanted friendship with the King of kings whose presence was foretold and foretold even in the stars!
These wise men knew to bring gifts, but how? They knew the star was leading them somewhere special, they knew they would meet someone special, but I suspect they really did not expect to find some common folks with a baby so small! What we observe here is that when you have Jesus with you, you can expect kings to come, pay respect, and be generous to support the mission of God’s work! Common people make friendships with the rich to do Jesus’ work!
6. I love the verse of study today with God’s promise of “God sets the solitary in families”. This is what Jesus was all about, to bring together you and me and all kinds of groups of people together that never would meet under ordinary daily circumstances. With Jesus we become family! Forget your flesh family as many of them may often let you down, Jesus gives you a real family in God!
I think most everyone, either rich or poor, live quite isolated from each other. But Jesus wants to bring us all together over Himself! Jesus is the supernatural uniting force that causes you and me to meet and to be friends with each other!
The people of the Christian faith travel to do mission work and make friendships that last a lifetime. Christians make deep friendships with unusual characters far and wide because it is all about Jesus! Jesus was the first one to get poor shepherds and rich kings to come together and be in awe at the work of God, was He not? With Jesus and your Christian family, you should never be alone!
7. Here is something to ponder, Jesus not only united odd people together, He was the first to unite us on all levels, a socio-economical-racial-&-religious one! He united the uneducated with the educated, which was Mary & Joseph with the shepherds, He was with the kings and wise men, and He is with you and me! KD
Jesus united the rich and powerful with the common folks, Mary and Joseph with the Orient Kings. And here is another factor, the kings were of different races too, Jesus unites us from different races!
And what about religion? Jesus unites those of other faiths to Him! The kings had a religion that included astrology and who knows what else, they were not Christian before meeting Jesus. God loved them anyway and revealed Himself to them. Jesus and God brings us all together when often our own people will not be close to us. Spiritual brothers and sisters are formed over our common faith in Jesus, and we should value each other as family. When Jesus called His disciples, they too were from very diverse backgrounds; Jesus was iconoclastic to the established set of societal customs.
8. Psalm 68:6 God sets the solitary in families; He brings out those who are bound into prosperity; But the rebellious dwell in a dry land. So, we see now how God unites us, an odd family, over Jesus but what about the rebellious, the faithless, the haters and the ones who refuse to honor Jesus?
The rest of this verse makes it clear, if you have God with you, and His Son Jesus as your focus, you can expect prosperity and the blessings of God. It is an observable truth that many of the children of poor immigrants, or people in poverty, have risen above their level because they received the support of their family of friends, those from the Christian church community.
“But the rebellious dwell in a dry land”! In all families, and throughout the world, there are so many that seem to go from bad situations to worse ones and why? Often because they are just brute beasts, living selfishly to survive, never thinking of helping others, never considering making friends with people very unlike their own selves. If a person doesn’t have Jesus, either by ignorance or flat-out rejection, then this person will not learn the beauty of being made rich with friends and family that are near them everywhere.
9. Christmas is about family and friends, and the sharing of good experiences together, even with people very different from you. Giving gifts and getting gifts can reveal to you that there are good people out there! Who knows, you might even make a new friend this Christmas.
Take advantage to tell others about Jesus this Christmas, that is the best gift you could ever give anyone! Giving Jesus to another means you are opening up the door for them to learn a new way of life, one where God is in control, one where God forgives, and one in knowing you are loved that you will go to heaven in the end!
Because of Jesus, life is worth living! Because of Christmas we can all meet new people! I have made friendships with a few thousand people in my lifetime, and this never would have happened if it were not for Jesus telling me to go into all the world to preach the gospel. I have been to more than a hundred cities and Jesus has blessed me beyond my wildest dreams!
I thank God I have met you, you who are here today, and I met you because we share in the same faith, that of having Jesus! And I thank God you are in the Salvation Army serving God as well!
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