Purpose: From Comfort to the Cross
Devotions this week based on Come Home Week 5 – PURPOSE (WATCH HERE)
Luke 2:34–35 Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, 35 so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”
The scene in the temple shifts quickly. What began with praise and peace now turns solemn. Simeon blesses Mary and Joseph, then speaks words that are both true and heavy: this child will not only bring salvation, but division. Hearts will be revealed. Resistance will rise. And Mary herself will feel deep pain. Even here, at the beginning of Jesus’ life, the shadow of the cross falls across the story.
It is tempting to think of purpose as something that brings clarity, ease, and satisfaction. Yet Simeon reminds us that God’s purpose often comes with struggle. The same Jesus who brings peace also brings confrontation. He exposes what we cling to, what we fear, and what we trust. Following Him is not about finding comfort, but about trusting God even when obedience costs us something.
Jesus later makes this clear when He calls His disciples to deny themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow Him. The cross is not an optional accessory of the Christian life. It is the shape of it. To follow Christ is to let go of the illusion that life should always be easy, safe, or predictable. The cross disrupts our desire to control outcomes and protect ourselves at all costs.
Mary would learn this slowly and painfully. The joy of the manger would one day give way to the grief of the cross. The child she cradled would be rejected, mocked, and crucified. Yet even then, God’s purpose was not lost. What looked like defeat was the very means by which God brought salvation to the world. The cross reveals the depth of human brokenness and the even greater depth of God’s love.
This challenges us because we naturally seek comfort. We build our lives around minimizing pain and maximizing ease. We prefer a faith that reassures without demanding, that inspires without disrupting. But purpose rooted in Christ often leads us into places we would not choose on our own…into forgiveness that feels costly, service that goes unnoticed, obedience that requires trust rather than certainty.
Still, the cross is never the final word. Jesus does not call us to carry crosses alone or without hope. He goes before us. He bears the ultimate weight of sin and death so that even our suffering is not wasted. In Christ, God meets us not by removing every hardship, but by redeeming it.
As you reflect on your own life, consider where comfort may be shaping your choices more than faithfulness. Are there places where God is inviting you to trust Him more deeply, even if it means discomfort? Following Jesus does not mean seeking suffering for its own sake. It means trusting that God is at work even when the path is hard.
The good news is that the same Savior who calls us to follow Him is also the one who carries us. Purpose is not found in avoiding the cross, but in walking with Christ through it—confident that His resurrection promise still stands.
Reflection:
Where am I tempted to choose comfort over faithfulness?
What might it look like to trust Christ more deeply in a difficult area of my life?
Prayer:
Lord Jesus, You know how quickly I seek comfort and avoid the cross. Give me faith to trust You when following is hard. Remind me that You go before me, that Your grace is sufficient, and that Your purposes are always good even when the road is difficult. Amen.
Purpose: Living for Christ, Not the Clock
Devotions this week based on Come Home Week 5 – PURPOSE (WATCH HERE)
Luke 2:25–32 (NIV) 25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. 26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. 27 Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, 28 Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:
29 “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
you now dismiss your servant in peace.
30 For my eyes have seen your salvation,
31 which you have prepared in the sight of all people,
32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel.”
We are very good at measuring life. We count birthdays, track milestones, mark accomplishments, and quietly compare ourselves to others. We ask questions like, How long will I live? What have I achieved? Did I make the most of my time? Scripture invites us to ask a better question: For whom am I living?
Simeon helps reframe how we think about purpose. Luke tells us that Simeon was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel. He was not described by his career, his status, or even his age. He was known for waiting—waiting with hope rooted in God’s promise. The Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would see the Lord’s Messiah before he died, and Simeon trusted that promise even as the days passed.
When Mary and Joseph brought the infant Jesus into the temple, Simeon recognized what others easily missed. This was not just another child. This was God’s salvation in human flesh. Simeon took Jesus in his arms and praised God, declaring that he could now depart in peace. His purpose was fulfilled, not because his life was long or impressive, but because God kept His promise.
Simeon’s story is a beautiful picture of justification by faith. Simeon did not achieve peace; he received it. Peace came not from his devotion or his waiting, but from holding Christ. The same is true for us. Our purpose is not earned by how well we live, how productive we are, or how much we accomplish. Our purpose is given to us in Christ.
Psalm 90:12 reminds us to number our days, not so we panic or strive harder, but so we gain a heart of wisdom. “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” That wisdom is knowing that our lives are not ultimately about us. As Paul says in Philippians, “For to me, to live is Christ.” Christ is not just part of life; He is our life. Everything else, work, family, success, even suffering, finds its meaning in Him.
As you look toward a new year, consider one simple practice that keeps Christ at the center—daily Scripture reading, regular prayer, worship, or intentional conversations about faith. These do not create purpose; they keep us connected to the One who does.
Reflection:
What currently defines success in my life?
How would my days look different if Christ truly defined my purpose?
Prayer:
Lord, teach me to number my days with wisdom. Free me from measuring my worth by time, productivity, or success. Fix my eyes on Christ, my salvation and peace. As I wait, help me trust Your promises and live faithfully where You have placed me. Amen.
Peace that continues…
Today’s devotion is based on Come Home for Christmas Week 4 – PEACE (WATCH HERE)
Isaiah 32:17 -18 The fruit of that righteousness will be peace; its effect will be quietness and confidence forever. 18 My people will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest.
The day after Christmas often feels quieter. The songs fade, the gatherings thin out, and ordinary life begins to return. Yet the gift we celebrated yesterday has not diminished. Christ has come, and with Him comes peace that does not depend on a season or a mood. Today invites us to consider how the peace that we experience on Christmas becomes a peace that shapes the way we live.
From the manger, our Savior invites us to orient our hearts and lives to the peace that he brings. Isaiah reminds us that the fruit of righteousness is peace and that God’s people will dwell in quiet resting places. Peace is not presented as a fragile feeling but as a lasting result of Jesus’ work on our behalf and as we walk rightly with God. When our lives are aligned with His ways, peace grows naturally. It settles our hearts and steadies our steps, even when the world around us remains uncertain.
To receive peace from Christ is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of a mission. Those who belong to God reflect His character, and one of His most beautiful traits is peace that restores and reconciles.
On this day after Christmas, we remember that Jesus did not arrive in a calm world. He was born into tension, oppression, and fear. Yet His presence introduced a new reality. Peace entered quietly, like light filling a dark room. It did not shout or demand attention, but it changed everything it touched. When Christ rules our hearts, His peace spreads in the same way. Others begin to notice a steadiness, a hope, a gentleness that cannot be explained by circumstances alone.
Living as people of peace means walking closely with Jesus and carrying His presence into anxious and broken places. It means allowing His rule to shape our responses. In conversations marked by stress or conflict, we choose patience instead of pressure. We listen before speaking. We respond with grace rather than defensiveness. Sometimes peacemaking looks like sharing how Jesus met us in our own fear and gave us rest. At other times it looks like quiet faithfulness and prayerful endurance.
Peace is not passive. It is active trust in God’s grace. As we step into the days following Christmas, opportunities will come to embody this peace. Family dynamics may be strained. Work and school pressures may return quickly. News headlines may stir worry. In each moment, Christ invites us to be reminded that he came to bring peace between us and God and then empower us to live differently, to let His peace guide our words, posture, and choices.
Take time today to ask where God wants you to bring his peace forward into your day and year ahead. Remember that peace grows as we walk in step with Jesus. The world does not need louder voices. It needs hearts anchored in the Prince of Peace.
Prayer: Lord, make us people of peace. Let Your shalom shape our lives and flow through us to a restless world. Use us to point people to you to find peace in the manger and always have that peace in their hearts, Amen.
Why Christmas Brings Peace…
A blessed Christmas to you all!
As you gather with family and friends today, may the joy and peace the Christ child brings fill your hearts and home!
Today I share an article that caught my attention…a Fourth Christmas Account? Wait, what? What could anyone add to Matthew 1, Luke 2 and John 1?
From a Catholic Bishop, Robert Barron, these insights bring depth to the great spiritual battle that was waging, even at Christ’s birth, to secure true and lasting peace, your salvation and mine. Enjoy the read. Respond if you’d like. Rejoice in Jesus’ victory for you…already at the manger! Merry Christmas!
(Reprinted from https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/bishop-robert-barron-mysterious-fourth-christmas-story-heaven-battling-evil
There are three well-known accounts of Christmas in the New Testament. We have St. John’s austerely metaphysical version (“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”). And we have the more narratively dense tellings in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Unique to Matthew is the reference to the Bethlehem star, the massacre of the innocents and the visit of the Magi. And peculiar to Luke are mentions of the census, the stable, the swaddling clothes, the shepherds and the angels. Most of us, when we imagine or depict Christmas, manage to mash together Luke’s and Matthew’s renderings.
But there is a fourth Christmas story in the New Testament, though it is rarely appreciated as such. Found in the 12th chapter of the Book of Revelation, it makes no reference to shepherds, Magi, or swaddling clothes, but it does speak of a birth and of a dragon. The portrayal of Christmas in the Revelation is not abstractly metaphysical, but it is not straightforwardly narrative either; rather, it is highly symbolic and apocalyptic. One might say that it is the view of Christmas from God’s perspective, from the highest possible point of vantage.
Chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation commences as follows: “A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.” Catholic interpreters have consistently read this figure as the Virgin Mary, and this is confirmed by what comes next: “She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth.”
Here is the Blessed Mother, summing up in her person the whole history of Israel (hence the 12 stars, suggestive of the 12 tribes), about to deliver the long-awaited Messiah. But then we hear of an opponent, a cosmic foil: “Another portent appeared in heaven: a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns.”
The purpose of this fearsome beast was entirely malevolent: “the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born.” We are meant to see something of extraordinary significance in this awful threat, namely, that the arrival of the Son of God is met with enormous resistance by the dark and fallen spiritual powers.
Jesus represents God’s rescue operation, his attempt to set right his fallen creation. And this means that those forces, both visible and invisible, that have a vested interest in maintaining the world as it is will go to any length to stop him.
With this interpretive key in mind, we can read Luke’s more familiar account with fresh eyes. Mary and Joseph are making their way to Bethlehem, not of their own accord, but because a domineering emperor has ordered a census of the whole world.
When they come to the inn seeking shelter, they are turned away. The newborn child is wrapped in swaddling clothes, which the fathers of the church read as an anticipation of the burial cloths that will, some 30 years later, wrap his dead body. He is laid in a manger, the place where the animals eat, for he will, at the conclusion of his life, offer his body and blood in atonement for sin.
Within days of his birth, his parents spirit him away, for Herod is desperately trying to kill him. In a word, the Christmas tale is not a charming story that we tell to children; instead, it is redolent of the great spiritual struggle, the war between good and evil that plays out in arenas both seen and unseen.
Does all of this leave us frightened or discouraged? Absolutely not — and the fourth Christmas story makes this plain. We hear that the woman clothed with the sun gave birth to “a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron.” Instead of being consumed by the dragon, he is snatched away and brought to the throne of God. The meaning is clear: this child will win the great war; through him, God will restore his creation; by him, God will establish his rule in the world.
We are then told that after the baby is taken away, “war arose out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon and his angels fought back but they were defeated.” The baby king masters the dark powers.
Jesus represents God’s rescue operation, his attempt to set right his fallen creation.
And now let us look again at Luke’s account. The evangelist tells us that an angel appeared the night of Jesus’ birth to shepherds keeping watch in the field. As is typical, the reaction to the manifestation of this other-worldly power is fear. Then, appearing with this fearsome reality is “a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying Glory to God in the highest.”
The Greek term rendered here as “host” is “stratias,” which means “army.” Our words “strategy” and “strategic” come from it. Mary and Joseph were compelled to go to Bethlehem because of an order given by the man with the biggest army in the world, but the heavenly army of the baby king is far greater, far stronger.
C.S. Lewis understood this dynamic very well, which is why he commented that God came into the world the way he did — quietly, unobtrusively, as a helpless child — because he had to sneak clandestinely behind enemy lines. We are all beset by evil in its various forms, wickedness that we can see and wickedness that we cannot see. We all feel threatened by the dragon. The good news of Christmas is that the victorious king has arrived, and so we don’t have to be afraid.
The Source of Peace Is a Person!
Today’s devotion is based on Come Home for Christmas Week 4 – PEACE (WATCH HERE)
On Christmas Eve, we stand on the edge of another Christmas celebration. The lights are soft, the songs familiar, and for a moment the noise of the world seems to hush. Yet many of us carry unrest into this night. We have questions we cannot answer, burdens we cannot fix, fears we cannot silence. Into that very human tension, Scripture speaks these words: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given… And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). Peace does not arrive as a strategy or a slogan. It arrives as a person.
Isaiah’s prophecy reminds us that peace flows not merely from what Jesus does, but from who He is. Each name given to the child in the manger addresses a deep place of human fear.
He is Wonderful Counselor. We live in a world of confusion. Information is everywhere, yet wisdom is scarce. Your heart tonight may be weighed down by decisions, regrets, and uncertainty about what comes next. Jesus brings peace because He is not a distant advisor but a present guide. His counsel is “wonderful” not just because it is wise, but because it restores clarity to disoriented souls. At Christmas, God steps into human confusion to walk with us, not merely point from afar.
He is Mighty God. Powerlessness is one of our greatest sources of anxiety. We cannot control the economy, our health, other people, or the future. But the child born in Bethlehem is no ordinary child. He is God Himself, clothed in weakness yet carries all power. This paradox brings peace: the One who rules the universe entered it humbly, proving that nothing is beyond His authority or care. When we feel small, He reminds us that ultimate strength rests not in us, but in Him.
He is Everlasting Father. Many know the ache of broken relationships, absent protection, or love that failed to last. Jesus brings peace because He reveals the heart of a Father whose care never expires. “Everlasting” means His presence is not seasonal, like holiday joy that fades when the decorations come down. On Christmas Eve, we remember that we are not abandoned children trying to survive the world alone. We are held by a Father whose love does not run out.
And He is Prince of Peace. This does not mean He removes every conflict or silences every storm. Jesus Himself later said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives” (John 14:27). The world offers peace when circumstances cooperate. Jesus offers peace through His presence. Like a child asleep during a stormy car ride, we rest not because the road is calm, but because someone trustworthy is driving. Christ’s peace steadies us even when life remains uncertain.
Tonight, as we remember the manger, we are invited to something deeply personal. Which name of Jesus do you need most right now? Is it His counsel for your confusion, His power for your weakness, His fatherly care for your wounds, or His peace for your anxious heart?
Christmas Eve reminds us of this simple, stunning truth: peace is not just a feeling, but a person. Do you have an anxious or broken life tonight? Invite him into that place with you. The child born for us is still present with us. And where He is, peace is never far away.
Prayer Jesus, Prince of Peace, we welcome You. Rule our hearts, calm our fears, and draw near to us this holy night. Amen.