Worship Service on December 25, 2024

At Christmas, our lives and attention are often occupied not only with the smaller details of the season—the decorations, the gifts, the special menus, the schedule of events—but also with those details of greater importance: family, parents and grandparents, children and grandchildren, as well as those of more distant relationships. Greater than that, as Christians we center our celebration here in God’s presence to hear God’s Word, to attend to what is most important, which alone can give all the other details of life its most solid foundation. That Word puts everything else in its proper perspective, including our place and participation in the kingdom of God. The “big picture” includes God’s amazing creation from the beginning, as well as our part in mankind’s fall into sin and struggle with Satan and death. Then enters God’s great remedy: our salvation from sin and death through the redemption that is in God Himself, in the person of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, our Lord. His incarnation and birth from the virgin Mary was a great miracle—God taking on our human flesh and blood. Greater, however, was His own sacrifice in our flesh, by which He has cast down Satan and his lies and raised up a new creation to new, eternal life. On this day, amid any and all distractions and details, the familiar hymn has it right: “How firm a foundation, O saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in His excellent Word!” (LSB 728:1).