Hello Altered Stories Family,
I hope you had a restful holiday season. Whether you celebrated Christmas or Hanukkah, I hope you took the time to reflect on why we celebrate these holidays. It is not about the gifts, the lights, or anything else. It is a about a baby who was born of a virgin, fully God and fully man. He lived a sinless life we could not, and died on a cross, to raise from the dead on the third day.
As the first several verses of John, Chapter 1 describes, Christ came into the world to be the light of the world. John 3:19-20 says that people love darkness and turn away from the light. This factor does not change the fact that Christ himself came as the light into the darkness.
In Hanukkah, we refer to the light often by the lighting of the candles using the servant candle, also known as the Christ candle, to light all the others. This celebration came about after the Jewish people fought to restore their temple. There was only enough oil for one day, but God caused the oil to last for eight days.
During this time, the Romans became powerful. The books of 1 and 2 Maccabees in the Apocrypha report that the Jews actually reached out to the Romans for help them fend off the Greeks who had imposed many laws on them, such as forbidding them from worshiping on the Sabbath, forcing them to eat pork, and etc., which is against their Jewish convictions
The Bible also shows that Hanukkah was kept by our Lord in John 10:22. It is known as “the feast of dedication.”
Now that these days have passed, we look forward to the New Year of 2023. How should we be during this transition?
I hope that we are prayerfully making time for God. I hope that these times refresh and restore you, so that when we enter the New Year of 2023, we do so with expectancy of the great things God has for us.
I hope we all can look back on this past year of 2022 and prayerfully see God’s hand working for your good.
God bless,
Teresa
