We’re almost to Christmas! It’s easy for me to get caught up in planning Christmas festivities, making sure I’ve bought all of my Christmas gifts, making last minute travel plans, filling any time off with a laundry list of things that have to get done around my house – it seems like anything and everything that can distract me, will. Everything that is, except the story of Jesus and his birth.
Confession time: When I was a kid, my parents and grandparents always used to have us read the Christmas story in Luke before we opened presents. I learned at an early age that the birth of Jesus didn’t actually happen around Christmas, and that the cutesy version of the shepherds and the magi meeting up in the manger at the same time wasn’t historically accurate, so I admit I was a bit disenchanted with the story. Add that to the fact that I had such rampant curiosity about the gifts I hadn’t managed to figure out weeks before Christmas, and reading Luke was never at the top of my to-do list on December 24th. It wasn’t that I wasn’t impressed by the story of Jesus’s birth. I had played Mary in enough church Christmas plays to think that the whole thing was pretty cool, I just think that 8 year old me had a bit of a skewed set of priorities.
Truthfully, it’s not difficult for 22 year old me to have a skewed set of them too, so I’m begrudgingly thankful when Advent rolls around and puts me in a position to think about more than just me. To read Matthew 2:1-12 and Luke 2:8-20 and think about what those meetings must have been like, regardless of the month of the year they actually took place. To meditate on the realization that both the Magi and the Shepherds brought treasures with them. The Magi, as most people know, brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh and they also bowed down and worshipped him. The Shepherds brought something that may have been even more valuable:
“So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.”
The shepherds saw a group of angels who told them that a baby who had just been born was actually the Messiah who would save them all. They took an outlandish message from a cohort of angels in the sky, and they went on faith into Bethlehem to see Jesus. Once they had seen the confirmation they were told to look for, they went around telling everyone what they had been told about who Jesus was and what he would be.
I love the part that says, “But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.” If she is anything like me, I’d imagine some of that thought process had to include a “Oh thank goodness, someone else believes it too. I’m not crazy. This is real. The Lord really talks to me, and he really said those things about this baby.” Maybe she never wavered, and if so I want to have faith more like that, but if she did, what a blessing it had to have been to this new mother to have these men say these things about her baby. To say these things that confirmed what she had known in her gut the last 9 months. That this baby was the Savior. That he was the Joy of The World. That her baby, this precious tiny baby, was the Messiah come in the flesh.
I want to follow Jesus this way. I want to hear outlandish things from God, and when I go and see the confirmation for myself, to be bold enough to talk about it, even if some people won’t believe me. To respond by giving God praise and glory. To say things that cause people to treasure them up and ponder them in their hearts, and let the Lord use me to confirm callings and words for other people.
To let my life proclaim: “Joy to the world! The Lord is come”
Joy to the World
Words by: Isaac Watts
Joy to the world! The Lord is come.
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room;
And heav’n and nature sing,
And heav’n and nature sing.
And heav’n and heav’n and nature sing.
Joy to the world, the Savior reigns
Let men their songs employ.
While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy
Repeat the sounding joy
No more let sin and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as the curse is found.
He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness.
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders of His love.
Credit: Photo by Rachel K Duncan // http://www.rachelkduncan.com // Instagram: @rachelkduncan
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