The Fourth Day of Christmas
On the fourth day of Christmas my True Love gave to me…four gospels!
We have four accounts of Jesus’ earthly life. Sometimes they match up exactly and other times seem very different. Eye-witness accounts are that way. We remember different details, see things from a unique vantage point. Each of us brings our own filter though which we perceive the world.
Matthew’s lens is accounting. He was an “IRS agent” for the Romans…a tax-collector…an accountant. He sees Old Testament prophecies as debits and Jesus’s life and deeds as credits in the balance sheet of history. Against doubts about whether Jesus was indeed the Messiah, Matthew sets the fulfillment of more than a dozen predictions.
Mark is the Jimmy Olson of the biographers. His account reads like evening news soundbites, or news photo captions. Short, tersely told stories mixed with succinct dialogue present a “Gee whiz, Superman!” approach to the Greatest Man who ever lived.
Luke brings the physician’s eye to the events of Jesus’ life. Painstakingly assembled from the eye-witness accounts of others, his chronology includes medical detail and more attention to the involvement of women in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.
John was the poet-philosopher entrusted with the care of Jesus’ mother Mary. His description of Jesus’ life is thematic rather than chronological, grouping the miracles, teaching, and self-declarations of the One who loved John to tell a love-story of the deepest and purest kind.
Four sets of eyes. Four accounts. One beautiful Savior! Thanks for the variety and perspective!
On the fourth day of Christmas my True Love gave to me:
Four gospels
Three witnesses, old and new birth and Himself wrapped in human flesh.
Merry Christmas!
Check back tomorrow for Day 5!
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