What is The Beauty of Christmas?

The most magnificent and glorious time of the year is Christmas.  We all enjoy contemplating the beauty of giving and the exquisiteness of our gifts.  These are our appeals to the magnetic allures of attractiveness.

Attractive is what we like seeing and what we like being.  We want to be appealing and surround ourselves with what’s engaging and likeable.  And when there is something superb and beautiful we relish soaking in its impressiveness and splendor.

But we have acquired tastes and learned appetites for what we estimate as inspiring and pleasing to our inclinations.  We have our cultural values and traditions that influence our tastes and then our individual ideals for what we calculate as beautiful.

The Psalmist reflects on what is impressive and excellent to his praise in Psalm 84:1.

How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts!

The term translated out in the Authorized rendering is amiable and in the Hebrew this means darling, lovely and beloved.  This is what and whom the writer of this Psalm found as his ultimate beauty.

In dictionary.com the definition of amiable is:

1.           having or showing pleasant, good-natured personal

qualities; affable: an amiable disposition. 

2.           friendly; sociable: an amiable greeting; an amiable 

gathering.

3.           agreeable; willing to accept the wishes, decisions, or

suggestions of another or others.

This dictionary says the obsolete meaning of amiable is lovable or loving.  I find it weird that those in our time in history have out dated the with the thought of lovely or beautiful as a meaning that is out of style.

But what is of value in beauty to humanity in general was not what the Psalmist here is isolating.  What is amiable and lovely to him is of such significance that he had scraped all other beauties aside and come to one single priority.

Ps 27:4 one thing, have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, And to inquire in his temple.

All the accessory disappointments of life become microscopic when the corrective lens of true beauty rises in focus.

Jesus described the one thing of consummate attraction in this way:  Luke 10:39-42

Martha had a sister called Mary, who also sat at the Lord’s feet, and heard his word.

But Martha was cumbered about much serving; and she came up to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister did leave me to serve alone? Bid her therefore that she helps me.

But the Lord answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art anxious and troubled about many things:

But one thing is needful: for Mary hath chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.

Paul talked of the one thing of true beauty in Phil. 3:13

I count not myself yet to have laid hold: but one thing I do, forgetting the things, which are behind, and stretching forward to the things, which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. 

Mary concentrated on Christ; Paul intensely pushed everything to the background to fix his mind on Jesus and the Psalmist says, this one desire, to live in the presence of the Lord, is his total and consuming passion.

The tabernacle, which was considered so lovely, was originally a tent that the people of Israel were directed to construct in very specific design stipulations.  They carried this temporary structure with them through the wilderness and erected it wherever they camped.

Tabernacle means dwelling place and this was placed in the middle of the peoples bivouac and was the place where the Lord’s presence was displayed to the people.  This later became a permanent structure during Solomon’s dynasty, which was destroyed during the destruction of the nation when under siege, but later rebuilt in the time of Nehemiah.

But now, in our time, Jesus has come down as Emanuel, God with us, and He tabernacled with us.  God has spoken to us in His Son.

Now although risen and exalted to God’s thrown room, He still gives us His presence, walking among us, and in us, and we look at His glory, which is the beauty of His character and the loveliness of His perfect acting’s of grace and truth in our lives, and we say, how beautiful is Your presence in our life O Lord of hosts, or our Lord of all things who controls each detail of our lives.

Psalms 84 The Beauty of Christmas is Christ

The Beauty of Intimate Communion with God

  Your Presence is Lovely         How amiable are your tabernacles

  Your Position is Lauded        O LORD of hosts!

Your Presence is:

What We Long For v.2      My soul longs,

What We Languish After yes, even faint for the courts of the  

                                                          LORD:

What We’re Lonely For   my heart and my flesh cry out for the                 

                                                         living God.