{"id":84,"date":"2014-12-04T18:33:37","date_gmt":"2014-12-04T23:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/?p=84"},"modified":"2016-08-23T18:37:41","modified_gmt":"2016-08-23T23:37:41","slug":"on-the-first-day-of-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/index.php\/2014\/12\/04\/on-the-first-day-of-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"On the First Day of Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Yes, I know I&#8217;ve been off for a while. Grands and all, you know how it is, chasing after &#8217;em all over the place, and then there was the prep and the cooking and thanking and the eating and the football games(i crawled off to read) and then there was recovery time (for 20 minutes) before the Christmas decorations came out of the closet. And&#8230;it started all over again only this time with the musical score to spur me on to pay attention to what is really meaningful in life. God&#8217;s message, Gabriel&#8217;s announcement, Mary&#8217;s acceptance, Joseph&#8217;s acceptance, Jesus&#8217; birth, the angels singing. Nothing would have meaning without this singular moment in time. Without a birth there could be no death, no atonement for our sin, \u00a0no resurrection, no realization that He&#8217;s alive, no redemption, no telling others, no life eternal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">\u00a0Our Redemption draws near.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080; font-size: 12pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong><em><span style=\"line-height: 24px;\">Now the Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We saw his glory\u2014the glory of the one and only, full of grace and truth, who came from the Father.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"line-height: 24px;\">John testified about him and shouted out, \u201cThis one was the one about whom I said, \u2018He who comes after me is greater than I am, because he existed before me.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"line-height: 24px;\">For we have all received from his fullness one gracious gift after another.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"line-height: 24px;\">For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came about through Jesus Christ.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"line-height: 24px;\">No one has ever seen God. The only one, himself God, who is in closest fellowship with the Father,\u00a0<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">has made God known<\/span>. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><em><span style=\"line-height: 24px;\">John 1:14-18<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-85\" src=\"https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/lightoftheworldweb-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"lightoftheworldweb\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/lightoftheworldweb-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/lightoftheworldweb.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 12pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"line-height: 24px;\">And so, it begins, grace and truth through Jesus and He alone makes God known to us. \u00a0The music of this season is so rich in truth and beauty as we prepare our hearts to welcome Him. Let the message in the music fill you full-up to the top and running over.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, I know I&#8217;ve been off for a while. Grands and all, you know how it is, chasing after &#8217;em all over the place, and then there was the prep and the cooking and thanking and the eating and the football games(i crawled off to read) and then there was recovery time (for 20 minutes) &#8230; <a title=\"On the First Day of Christmas\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/index.php\/2014\/12\/04\/on-the-first-day-of-christmas\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about On the First Day of Christmas\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[12,32,11,67],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-advent","tag-hope","tag-jesus","tag-light-of-the-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86,"href":"https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions\/86"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}