Christmas Cup


At the truly stellar loft where we are presently residing in Asheville, North Carolina, this morning was looking like an Easter Egg Hunt of used glasses. The glasses, many of them fine glassware, needed to be hand-washed. I counted at least 20 after tracking them down and cleansing them. This is on top of the glasses already presently clean in the run dishwasher. For four people, that is an impressive amount of glasses used for less than 36 hours since our arrival, with 24 hours of this time being Christmas Day.

The other couple gave me this Unibroue gift glass for Christmas.

All four of us enjoy beer, wine, and additional spirits (And H2O, lest one think that is all). And, it is quite accurate to state that these spirits are not Bud Light or some other weakened brethren in bottles. It is quality drink, deserving of enhanced glassware. All of these glasses made me reflect on the cup of suffering Christ came to drink to the full.

From the day he was born onward, His whole life was destined to cross paths with the cup of God's wrath in His hand. Only he could drink it, and only would He drink it. May we not downplay the horror of Jesus asking for this cup to pass from Him. He anticipated the agony. His Christmas Cup, the reason for His coming, was the sin of the world. We who deserved the drink, able to pass it to Him.

The Commentator Clarke notes:

"This cup - The word cup is frequently used in the Sacred Writings to point out sorrow, anguish, terror, death. It seems to be an allusion to a very ancient method of punishing criminals. A cup of poison was put into their hands, and they were obliged to drink it. Socrates was killed thus, being obliged by the magistrates of Athens to drink a cup of the juice of hemlock. To death, by the poisoned cup, there seems an allusion in Hebrews 2:9, Jesus Christ, by the grace of God, Tasted death for every man. The whole world are here represented as standing guilty and condemned before the tribunal of God; into every man's hand the deadly cup is put, and he is required to drink off the poison - Jesus enters, takes every man's cup out of his hand, and drinks off the poison, and thus tastes or suffers the death which every man otherwise must have undergone." 


Matthew 26:39


And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.       

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