Evening on Christmas

Dear friends!
Merry Christmas! Our Savior is born and has washed away our sin! Joy to the world for that!

I received a book that I have been wanting for a while for christmas today, it is called Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon, its a devotional for each day of the year. It unlike most devotionals has one for morning and one for evening. I first heard of this book from my friend Melanie's blog Complete In Thee. I love it and I am enjoying it. I thought I would put today's evening on here to share to close this precious and joyous day! I have spent it with friends and family and I am tired, but content and joyful and encouraged by our Savior and christian fellowship with fellow believers rejoicing in His birth.

Evening, December 25 from Charles Spurgeon's, "Morning and Evening"

"And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said," It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts, Thus did Job continually." -Job 1:5

What the patriarch did early in the morning, after the family festivities, it will be well for the believer to do for himself ere he rests tonight. Amid the cheerfulness of household gatherings it is easy to slide into sinful levities, and to forget our avowed character as Christians. It ought not to be so, but so it is, that our days of feasting are very seldom days of sanctified enjoyment, but too frequently degernate into unhallowed mirth. There is a way of joy as pure and sanctifiying as though one bathed in the rivers of Eden: holy gratitude should be quite as purifying an element as grief. Alas! for our poor hearts, that facts prove that the house of mourning is better than the house of feasting. Come, believer, in what have you sinned today?Have you been forgetful of your high calling? Have you been even as others in the idle words and loose speech? Then confess the sin, and fly to the sacrifice. The sacrifice sanctifies. The precious blood of the Lamb slain removes the guilt, and purges away the defilement of our sins of ignorance and carelessness. This is the best ending of a Christmas-day- to wash anew in the cleansing fountain. Believer, come to this sacrifice continually; if it be so good tonight, it is good every night. To live at the altar is the privledge of the royal priesthood; to them sin, great as it is, nevertheless no cause for despair, since they draw near yet again to the sin-atoning victim; and their conscience is purged from dead works.

"Gladly I close this festive day,
Grasping the altar's hallow'd horn;
My slips and faults are washed away;
The Lamb has all my trespass borne."

To all of you may you have a blessed Christmas and a happy new year! I will be posting more often, as I have christmas and new years' break this week. I will be posting my thoughts spiritually, in the sewing room, craftings, and books I am reading. Merry Christmas and lets remember the birth and the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ!

In Christ,
Rebecca