THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 29, 1994 TAG: 9412280194
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
``Strength and weakness''
Notwithstanding the increased levels of anxiety for some, the holiday season is for many others a season of positive energy. It speaks of optimism and celebration. Just say the word and multitudes think of a shopping extravaganza and excitement. Of family reunions and a sense of security.
Surely it's a time of great expectations: parties, parades and being able to watch three football games in one day. It's a time of marveling at the genius of technology, whether it be Power Rangers or Pentium chips.
Furthermore, the caboose of this year brings with it the strength of a stable economy and the hopes of the new Washington majority to work for order, restraint and virtue.
In all of this, there is reason to enter into a new year with a rush of personal and cultural adrenaline. To feel strong.
But this season is not about strength. It's about weakness.
At Christmas, the eternal, infinite God became a helpless, finite baby. The Word became flesh. Flesh that was laid in a scrubby feeding trough and wrapped in swaddling clothes. It's a story about this same baby growing into a young boy and then a man. A man who went about doing good, teaching truth and exposing error and hypocrisy. A man who willingly subjected himself to cruel, strong men who killed him for being weak and yet claiming to be God the Son. How could He, the son of simple Joseph and Mary from backwoods Nazareth, be Messiah? Born in obscurity and poverty, he also died in shame and weakness, exiled from his own race and even from his own Father in heaven.
But here's the punch line: He was born and died in weakness to show us our weakness. He took to Himself our weak flesh and paid for our weak failings. The chastisement of our impotence was laid upon Him. In the person of Jesus, God became weak so we could see we are weak.
It's appropriate that a New Year follows on the heels of Christmas. For real ``newness'' can only follow the message of Christmas. Real newness can only come when a person sees his or her weakness and embraces the only solution. The same infant who was born in provincial Bethlehem proclaimed as a man, ``Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'' The same man who would die the utterly vile death of crucifixion had announced, ``For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.''
Why don't people see this more clearly? Why do our leaders go on leading as if God does not exist? Why is our culture being hollowed out by so much illegitimacy and irresponsibility? Why is the family, the basic building block of a stable society, being undermined by so many ``alternative'' plans and abandoned by apathetic parents? Why is sexual licentiousness flaunted before us by the media, while it eats away at the foundation of democracy? Why is the crime rate so high and the literacy rate so low?
Because . . . we are so strong. MEMO: EDITOR'S NOTE: Today's devotional for the new year was contributed by
the Rev. Ruffin Alphin, pastor of Suffolk's Westminster Reformed
Presbyterian Church.
ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MICHAEL KESTNER
The Rev. Ruffin Alphin, pastor of Westminster Reformed Presbyterian
Church, prepares his devotional for the new year.
by CNB