In a conversation I had earlier today we observed how full people’s lives are. Work, family, household and other responsibilities have people “on the run”. For those of us with day schedules, we get up, get ready, hurry to work, after hurrying children to school. Then we work through break times, even lunches, push hard through to the end of the work day. On the way home, we run by and pick up groceries or try to get to Jiffy Lube before it closes. Arriving home, we’re tired mentally and emotionally. But there’s stuff to be done and we try to get to it. Next day, it’s “wash, rinse and repeat”.
Centuries ago, there were people on the way to pay their taxes, folk raising crops and herds, people in authority being careful to keep a hold of their power, families bustling to get it done and survive. Really not much different than today. Days passed that looked very much like the ones before.
In the midst of this “regular, busy, full life” something happened. There was a baby who arrived into the world. That wasn’t so strange, but it’s how he got here and who he was that was so unexpected. The young mom’s name was Mary. Though she was betrothed to marry Joe, a carpenter, the baby was not his. The baby was God’s! Right in the middle of the mundane world, God entered the world as a baby through Mary. Unexpected. Bizarre. Strange. Miraculous!
In this season the leads up to Christmas I invite you to stop for a moment or two and think about this. God invaded our world. He came in the middle of all the busyness. It was in this life that He changed everything through His Son, Jesus.
He came so he could show us how we can have a relationship with Him that transforms our lives. He came to save us from drudgery and sameness. He came to enliven our souls so that in the middle of our busy lives we may yet know the exhilarating joy of being a child of God. That we would have hope because Christ holds our future and teaches us how to live each day with meaning and honor and love.
One wrote, “The enemy of the best is the merely good.” Take a look at your calendar, I’m sure there’s a lot of “good” there. But the best, a relationship with God in one of His communities, makes it worth dropping some good off the calendar and drastically improves the other good left on the calendar.
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