From the Editor Nov/Dec 2018
When my younger daughter was about 12, she took figure skating lessons. She got pretty good, too. Since we were always at the rink about two hours, I’d bring work with me. One day a girl who sometimes skated with my daughter sat down beside me. She asked me what I was doing, and I told her I was editing an article about Jesus. “I know a little about Him,” she said.
Truth be told, she knew nothing. She didn’t know the Christmas story; and she certainly didn’t know that Jesus was God incarnate who came to die in our place, enabling us to have forgiveness of sin through faith in Him.
So I used the colors of her clothing and mine to tell her the story of Jesus: Yellow or gold stood for heaven, where God lives; a dark color stood for sin, which separates us from God and keeps us out of heaven; red stood for Christ’s blood, which He shed for us by taking the punishment we deserve; and white stood for His resurrection and how He washes our sins away, if we ask Him, and makes us clean so that we can go to heaven. There’s a little more to this method of presenting the gospel, but those are the basics.
What is more wonderful than the gospel? Every time I read Luke 2:11, a great peace washes over me: “For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” We have a Savior! Someone who can reconcile us to God, make a home for us in heaven, and give us peace that passes all understanding regardless of our circumstances.
Christmas is my favorite holiday. Not because of gifts (we rarely give gifts in my family now, praise God) and not because of the big hubbub that surrounds the season but, rather, because this is the time of year we specifically set aside to praise and thank the Father for sending us His Son.
How perfectly God orchestrated every tiny detail. He is a God of precision. In this issue of Israel My Glory, we focus on that precision and how He arranged a multitude of circumstances to bring into this troubled and needy world the only One who could take away our sins.
This Christmas, let’s share the gospel with as many people as possible and focus on thanking our great God for His everlasting love. Merry Christmas from all of us at Israel My Glory magazine.
Waiting for His Appearing,
Lorna Simcox
Editor-in-Chief
