Teenage Driving Interventions - Stefanie Stoops

I've been reading a series of Advent devotionals by John Piper. They aren't very Christmasy, but truly speak to the spiritual depth that is often missing in our modern Christmas. I read a selection called "What Christmas Came to Destroy." A little startling if you ask me. The little devotional talks about how the Messiah came to do away with all that is wrong in the world. How often do we think of the infant adored by the shepherds as a destroyer, a victor? It's a theme that is touched on slightly during the Easter season, but how many of us take the theology of the Messiah's victory over sin and death and translate it into practical victory? That infant in the manger already has victory over what we face in this moment. I should be the happiest person in the world. After all, He defeated DEATH. Who was the last person who could claim he had defeated death? Yet, it rolls off of our lips. And the victor-we see the infant in the manger as a helpless powerful being. As a human being, he obviously needed, like all infants, care and protection. But what I have perhaps ignored until now is that that infant posed a threat, and not just to Herod the Great. The birth of the messiah was the incarnation, the placement of a perfect God in an imperfect human body, and if that isn't astounding enough, the beginning of the road to the cross. That infant in the manger was the most important person ever born. Period.

Piper, John. The Dawning of Indestructible Joy. Wheaton: Crossway, 2014. Print Retrieved from http://www.desiringgod.org/books/the-dawning-of-indestructible-joy