He will herald God’s arrival in the style and strength of Elijah, soften the hearts of parents to children, and kindle devout understanding among hardened skeptics – He’ll get the people ready for God! Luke 1:17 from The Message
I’m not sure what it is about this season, but it seems to breed impatience and frenzied times in many of us. While buying Christmas poinsettias at Home Depot the other day, I felt that frenzied feeling coming on as I waited in line to pay. After paying the cashier, I was walking away when I heard her call, “Hey baby, you forgot your plants.” Embarrassed, I walked back and said, “I’m so sorry. Sometimes I feel like I’m losing my mind.” She smiled and said, “No baby, you aren’t losing your mind, you’ve just got too much on it!!”
We can all identify with the mother who was Christmas shopping with her small son. As she ran from store to store, she realized that her son was not beside her. In a panic, she retraced her steps and found her three year old pressing his face against a store window looking at a manger scene. He heard her panicked cry and said, “Look Mommy, it’s Baby Jesus in the hay.” With indifference to his wonder, she grabbed him and said, “We don’t have time for that!” On that first Christmas, the innkeeper had no room for Jesus. Today, we seem to have no time for Him.
Even on that day long ago, we find the rush of life. The Bible says the shepherds came to Bethlehem with great haste, but they had something that seems lost in this world of today. They had wonder. The curse of people today is that we are so busy we have no time for wonder. Dag Hammersjkold said years ago, “If spiritual things become a drag and the message of Christmas is dull, you can be sure the problem is not in the message but in our loss of the awe and wonder of it.”
In the gospel of Luke, we see the wonder of God’s loving kindness and guidance toward Mary and Joseph as He guided them through all the problems they faced in bringing the Messiah into this world. God worked out a plan to fulfill the prophecy and also get the couple to Bethlehem for the birth of Jesus.
There is the wonder of God’s orchestration of the greatest choir ever assembled as he brought the angels to sing praises to the King. Nothing was too extravagant to bear witness to the birth of our Savior. If all of heaven rang as the angels sang, then how can we as benefactors of God’s greatest gift ever take for granted the awe and wonder of it all.
It is said that familiarity breeds contempt, but more often that not, familiarity just breeds indifference. The more familiar it becomes, the less fascination we have. The newness fades and we lose the wonder. We have heard the Christmas story over and over, and slowly the wonder of what happened over 2000 years ago diminishes. The old, old story has become just that an old, old story.
A group traveling by train through the Rocky Mountains was thrilled and visibly moved by the beauty all around them! A woman traveling with them hardly raised her eyes from the book she was reading, and when she was asked why she explained, “This is the thirteenth time I have crossed these mountains. The first few times I was so impressed that I couldn’t keep the tears from flowing, but now I know it so well that I frequently go through the whole trip without even a glance outside.” Her sense of wonder was gone, and she no longer recognized the beauty and grandeur all around her. This same principle is constantly at work in relation to the marvel, mystery, awe, majesty of God, and wonder of Christmas!
If there is one thing I could wish for all of us this Christmas it would be to feel the same wonder that Mary, Joseph, and the Shepherds felt on that special night long ago. The coming of Jesus Christ into their lives changed them forever, and it can do the same for each of us. They would never be the same. Jesus came into this world 2000 years ago to change it forever, and wonder of wonders, He did!
The picture above depicts the wonder of the season through the eyes of my sweet niece’s son. May his sense of wonder dwell in each of us this Christmas!
I wonder as I wander out under the sky; That Jesus my Savior did come for to die, For poor or’ny people like you and like I; I wonder as I wander out under the sky. Song by Audrey Assad