Christmas is coming! Just like the stockings I will be
hanging and stuffing soon, the days ahead will be full of people, music,
family, long enjoyed recipes and of course beautifully lit Christmas trees.
Amidst all of the wrapping, parties, concerts, carols, card writing and family
visits, this time seems to me to be one that is saturated with hope. Hope, in
the form of a God designed plan, the sound of prophets’ pleas, in steadfast
hearts of many. Hope in the action of God becoming man.
Jesus came in the most unlikely of circumstances; not what
the random observer expected for the
Creator God and Holy King. He came, fully
God and fully man, in a method that brings hope still today - as a baby. He who
designed our legs to walk and knows every language, chose to come as a baby who
learned to walk and speak by toddling and jabbering. Tiny, dependent, and
utterly precious; he chose to defy our expectations of the extraordinary.
Hanging ornaments and singing songs, the memories of family
come flooding back. Ornaments remind me of my own family, a perfect time for considering
again God’s use of the ordinary to create the extraordinary. The cry did not well
up from the streets that the King of Kings had come. It was the arrival of a
baby and the gift of life to give us the most extraordinary thing of all,
giving us grace.
Luke’s excitement over the
details of these events were captured in his letter to Theophilus. He shared the
story of the gift of hope with us.
“Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to
set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and
ministers of the word delivered them to us, it seemed
good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very
first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you
may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed.”
Luke 1:1-4
