“That is why, behind all our fun and games at Christmastime, we should not try to escape a sense of awe, almost fright at what God has done.  We must never allow anything to blind us to the true significance of what happened at Bethlehem so long ago.  Nothing can alter the fact that we live on a visited planet.”

-JB Philips

“Watch for the Light” Advent Reader

 

The overwhelming reality that God has visited our planet should rightly jolt a person.  It should kick them and startle their innermost being.  So often we picture Christmas as a nice holiday, something so neat and tidy with a bow on top of it.  Cute figurines represent the holy family and bright lights shine forth in the dark winter.  We say put Christ back into Christmas as we run around completing our Christmas shopping list.  The mystery of the first Advent is replaced with orderliness and busyness.

As we enter into the midst of the Christmas season, it is important to remember the scandal and drama of that first Advent centuries ago.  God became man and walked on this planet.  He came down, emptied Himself, and lived on this planet.  God, the powerful covenant keeping Lord who brought Israel out of Egypt and rescued her from her foes (see Psalm 136 as the psalmist develops this thought), sat inside the womb of Mary for nine months.  God, the one who spoke the universe into existence, then learned how to speak and walk as a toddler does.  We live on a globe that once was visited by God Himself, clothed in the flesh of humanity!

To process the reality that God became man and dwelt among us is too bizarre.  How frightfully wonderful to think that the incarnation occurred so that we might be reconciled to God.  Now as we await the second Advent of Jesus, it makes for even more interesting drama.  Christ will return and right the world.  He will finally implement His Kingdom in its totality. 

And with that thought I pray, “Lord come quickly!”