Hope you are warm on this chilly Saturday morning. Just a reminder of a few things:

• we do have two services tomorrow (9 and 10:30)
• bring your Christmon ornaments to put on the Christmon tree tomorrow (if you don’t have one, come anyway – I didn’t have one last year)
• Consider giving to the Lottie Moon Christmas offering for international missions
• Tomorrow night at 6 pm at the worship center – church-wide fellowship. Bring snack foods. We will play board games and hear the Christmas story.

With all these new babies at FC, I heard the term “swaddled” again the other day. Then I read more about Jesus’ clothes in A Not-So-Silent Night. Before and after the incarnation Jesus is clothed in splendor and majesty (Ps. 93:1; 104:1-2; Rev. 19:11-16). But at his birth Jesus is wrapped in strips of cloth. He is swaddled in helplessness as he enters our world to save us. Then, at the end of his life, Jesus is “swaddled” again. Luke 23:50-53 reads:

Now there was a man named Joseph, a member of the Council, a good and upright man, who had not consented to their decision and action. He came from the Judean town of Arimathea, and he himself was waiting for the kingdom of God. Going to Pilate, he asked for Jesus’ body. Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen cloth and placed it in a tomb cut in the rock, one in which no one had yet been laid.

The glorious Son of God submitted to a humiliating swaddling at birth and at death in order to give us life. “… you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21).

Praise his name!

sd