You may notice that the web address and lay-out for my blog is different.  Our student minister, Johnathan Woodward, has built me a new blog to go along with our new church web-site which will hopefully be rolled out today or tomorrow.  I haven't transported some things from my old blog yet but I did want to begin using it. 
      Yesterday at FBCD I continued in our series on "Sermons From The Stained Glass."  The message was on the window depicting the Nativity.  The Nativity tells us about the birth of Christ which also tells us about the Incarnation of Christ.  The Incarnation of Christ tells us that Jesus is "Emmanuel: God with Us."  But what does that mean to us?  It remind us of
 God’s Compassion For Man.

God recognized the plight of man and God cared. 

Remember those two words; God cared. 

God saw man and saw that man needed a Savior and God cared. 

John 3:16 says it best, “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

            God looked down upon man and realized that man needed a Savior and was moved to help man.  God had compassion on man. 

            It was the same compassion that Jesus had.  The Bible says that when Jesus Looked upon Jerusalem He said, “O Jerusalem , Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing” (Matthew 23:37).

            Jesus cared. 

            2,000 years ago, Jesus walked among humanity. 

            Donald Miller, in his book Blue Like Jazz, includes a story he said a folksinger told him.  This folksinger said his friend was a Navy SEAL and was performing a covert operation, freeing hostages from a building in some dark part of the world.  They flew in on a helicopter and made their way into the room where the hostages had been held for months.  The hostages were curled up in the corner of this dirty room, terrified, The SEALS told the prisoners they were Americans and that they had come to save them.  They asked the hostages to follow them, but instead, they remained on the floor, afraid, paralyzed.  The SEALS didn’t know what to do.  They couldn’t carry them all out.  Finally, one of them sat down his weapon, took off his helmet and curled up tightly next to the other hostages with their bodies touching.  He smiled and put his arms around the hostage.  No prison guard would do that.  He just laid there next to the hostage for a few minutes and finally whispered again, “We are Americans.  We’re here to save you. . Will you follow us?”  When the SEAL stood to his feet, the hostage stood to his feet as well.  And then the others followed him and eventually all of the hostages were transported to safety.