“Merry Christmas,” we call out to our friends and family with frosty breathe in the early winter evenings in the northern continents. At least our hearts our warm with tender feelings for strangers even on the sidewalks as we hurry on toward December 25th. What is this Christmas holiday all about, really? We sing “the first Noel”….“born was the King of Israel.” We sing “oh, star of wonder, star of night”…and “lead us to the perfect light.” We know the Christmas story about Jesus being a savior, born in a manger to a dark and dreary world but how is the birth of Jesus Christ viewed from a celestial point of view.
This event was of such magnitude that an angel was sent down to earth near the little town of Bethlehem to “shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.”
I guess these country sheepherders must have been terrified when a celestial being in the form of an angel suddenly appeared against the grassy hillside. They were used to gazing at the stars in the night. But now a brilliant shining light surrounded the figure in front of them.
“Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favour rests.”
These celestial angelic entities entered our 3 dimensional physical realm to verbally communicate a message of such stupendous significance that there were hordes of them in the sky to witness it. It was their celebration, not ours! The shepherds who witnessed the event must have heard this message in their minds or spoken out loud in their language in order for it to be later meticulously recorded, and preserved for us today in written form.
Where did this great heavenly host of celestial beings shining so brilliantly against the sky come from? Perhaps all together they looked like a star. Maybe this was the star described as a radiant orb of light that had been sighted when it rose in the east. This luminous moving host in the sky was first appearing, moving, and then stopping at a specific time and place. What star does that?
History tells us there were Magi, influential learned men who had first sighted it and traveled to follow it. “…the star they had seen in the east (or when it rose) went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was.” If these men had our vocabulary, they would perhaps have claimed it as an unidentified aerial phenomenon that had come down from the heavens. A fantastic message was given to them by a host of celestial entities. The message? – That a saviour to the whole human race was born, that a child was born, part God, part man and sent to us as a celestial ambassador from their realm into ours. This was and is Good News because we, and our planet still need saving. Praise God that they deem us scrawny human beings worthy enough to be saved!
***(Luke 2:8–14), (Matthew 2:9–11), (Luke 2:12)
With this background, I now wish you a fine celebration on Christmas Day!
Jane Catherine Rozek 