Skip to main content

First Christmas Messaging

If you had an important message to share, who would you share it with to insure that the message gets out?  

The political leaders?

The religious leaders?

The rich?

The powerful?

To those with the greatest influence?

The people who have access to modes of communication?

Just my impressions, but it seems to me that:

If you sent it to the political leaders, they might use it for political gain.

If you sent it to the religious leaders, they might filter it to reflect their views.

If you sent it to the rich, they might leverage it for financial gain.

If you sent it the powerful, they might use it to further consolidate their power.

If you sent it to those with the greatest influence, they might use it advance their agenda.

If you sent it to those who have access to modes of communication, they might shape it fit their optics.

The message was this:  And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.”  (Luke 2:10)

The “them” was a bunch of shepherds.  At that time, shepherds were on the low end of the social economic ladder.  They spent most of their time with animals and probably didn’t have much of a voice in society.  Yet, these are the very ones to whom the message of the arrival of a Savior was first shared.  

And look at the shepherds handled the message:  “And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.”  (Luke 2:20)

While the other people described above might have been an obvious first choice, the message might not have gone forth in its intended form.  But the shepherds received it, believed it and acknowledged it as it had been told to them.  Proof once again that God’s messaging is always best.

 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Excel Still More!

To excel, according to some of the meanings from a few dictionaries, is to surpass others, do extremely well, outdo, do something better than anyone else. In 1 Thessalonians 4:1, we find the phrase “excel still more”.   It prompts the question:  if we are already doing something better than anyone else, why would we be encouraged to do even more? Perhaps it would be helpful to see the wording that other translations use for “excel still more” to see why we would be encouraged to do so.  Here is a sampling: • abound more and more • to keep doing so more and more • but try even harder • live that way more and more. • that you progress even more. • that you increase more and more in how you ought to walk Maybe it would also be helpful to see some other verses where the word “excel” is used: “Now in Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha (which when translated means Dorcas); this woman was excelling in acts of kindness and charity which she did habitually.”...

Value Proposition

Value proposition:  it’s a marketing statement that summarizes why a consumer should buy a product or use a service.  It should clearly and concisely communicate what customers can gain from selecting a particular brand over that of its competitors. In a value proposition, you don’t want your product to be viewed as being worth less than what your competitors offer.   But even worse, in a bit of a quirk of how letters and spaces can fall, if you take out the space between “worth” and “less”, you get “worthless”, which means something of no value.   If that word is used in conjunction with how your product is viewed by customers, it’s a word that will likely kill your brand. In the book of Philippians, the Apostle Paul, in a sense, communicated some value propositions. In chapter three, he starts off with describing the value of some things that many considered as extremely valuable in that day and age.   They had to do with status and achievement in the reli...

Outrun the What?

“Outrun the rays”!  It’s a phrase I noticed on a billboard.  I think it’s a public service type campaign.  The intent, I assume, is to get people out of the harmful rays of the sun that can cause things like skin cancer.  But you really can’t outrun the rays, they travel at about 186,282 miles per second! Yet the campaign has a certain appeal to it.   “Outrun” sounds a lot like a competition and maybe it gets the competitive juices going for some.   Yet, try as you may, you still can’t outrun the rays, but you can implement strategies to avoid them.   And most of those strategies have a simple foundational aspect to them; you avoid the rays by finding some type of covering. Strategies for covering up from the rays include being in shaded areas, putting on clothing that blocks the rays or putting on sun screen. While the sun’s rays can certainly cause significant physical harm and cover is essential to combat that, there are also areas of our live...