“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2: 14).
What a glorious scene it must have been to the poor shepherds of Bethlehem ” … keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke 2:8), when, after the angel had given his wonderful message and told them of their Saviour’s birth, there suddenly burst upon their astonished sight ” … a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2:13-14).
Very glorious and very awful must it have been; and yet, how must their hearts have thrilled and leaped with joy and gladness at such blessed words. They were the best tidings the world had ever heard. Surely no heart that heard them could be cold and thankless.
But the same ” … good tidings of great joy … ” (Luke 2:10) are spoken to us now. Every Christmas does the joyous song of the angels ring anew in our ears, and the tidings are quite as ” … good tidings … ” for us as they were for the shepherds of Bethlehem. For us, as much as for them, was ” … born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” How then do the tidings fall upon our hearts now? Are they ” … good tidings of great joy … ” to us? Or do they enter our dull ears and cold hearts like an old tale that has lost its charm by being often told?
Oh! Can any true Christian help rejoicing at this blessed season? Is there any faithful child of God whose heart can help bounding again at the joyous Christmas tidings, as they fall, in all their old familiar gladness, upon the ear? They call back childhood’s happy days, when the blessed words of this day’s triumphant joy rang so freshly in our hearts, when the old chiming of the bells, and the old words of the well-remembered hymn, and the bright unfading holly, and the cheerful fireside, and all the many joys of this holy and happy time gave a charm to blessed Christmastime.
This charm it can never lose till our latest hour on earth, and which, perchance, shall help to make the remembrance of it beautiful throughout all eternity. Yea, though years may creep over us, and life with its sins and its sorrows, its disappointments and its weariness, may somewhat deaden the fresher feelings of our younger days, yet cold and deadened indeed must that heart be that, even in saddest sorrow, has no welcome left for Christmas.
Yet, though joy is so natural at this joyous season, there is need of much care and watching that our Christmas rejoicing be of the right sort. It is very easy to rejoice after a wrong fashion – to join in all the merriment and pleasure of the season without having any true Christian joy, without thinking at all of the wondrous event which makes this so really blessed a day to man.
Paul’s command is to “Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). This is true Christian rejoicing, to “Rejoice in the Lord … ” When can we more fitly and more fully obey this command than on that day when we remember that the Lord was born into the world to live and die for us, when ” … unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given … ” (Isaiah 9:6). The heavenly hosts themselves rejoiced in the Lord, chanting in heavenly strains their song of triumphant praise, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2: 14).