TUESDAY December 17th
Today I am going to turn our attention to a carol, which I have picked up since we have been living here in the northeast seems to be a favourite with some in our fellowship and having experienced or so far experiencing our fifth full winter here, I can see that you understand what bleak mid-winter really means! Yes, the carol is ‘In the bleak mid-winter.
I am not too sure that the scene fits in with what it would have been like on the night when our Saviour was born, but it does fit in with the time of the year in which we in the UK remember his birth. But I am not going to concentrate on the cold wintery scene, but rather on the last of the four verses:
What can I give him,
poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd,
I would bring a lamb;
if I were a wise man,
I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give him –
give my heart.
This verse always brings a challenge to me, for it reminds me that God loved me (and of course you as well as you read this devotion) that he gave his very best for me, his one and only Son, or as we read in Mark 1:11, his beloved Son. And his Son in turn also gave of his very best for me, he gave up his life. And the more I consider this and then answer the question in this fourth verse, ‘What can I give him?’ The only answer can be that I must give him my heart.
And this brings a further challenge, what does our giving him our heart really mean. What does it look like? Well, another well-known hymn, ‘When I survey the wondrous cross’, helps us to understand it and it is in the final two lines of the last verse, ‘Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all’.
It means that we empty our lives of all that is against God, against his demands, against his word, against his will and we allow him to completely fill us with himself and all that is in accord to being a man or a woman who claims to be his child through new birth.
Christ emptied himself to come into this world and we on receiving him need to empty ourselves of the world and allow him to be Lord.
Well, I haven’t given a scripture yet, especially as it is a devotion, and there is only one I can add that ties in with it all and it is this one from Deuteronomy 6:5 ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.’ Quoted by Jesus himself in Mark 12:30 ‘And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’