Just some early morning thoughts from me to you…
“For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
Isaiah 9:6 (NKJV)
We’re close. And we know it.
You can feel it in everything that’s going on around you. My Granddaughters can feel it, and the radiant expressions on their faces remind all around them who are bathed in their glow. Christmas decorations are going up everywhere you look and as far as one might imagine they’re going up all around the world. The annual conversations, controversies and boycotts about Christmas trees, holiday trees, and greetings of Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays are in full swing.
Christmas is near.
We’re so close. You could almost throw a rock toward it and hit the stable where He was to be born. That’s how close we are to Christmas. That’s how close we are to that day, that celebration, that eternal moment once again, of the birth of the One that life is all about.
But will we hit it?
So close to the birth of the One we set our calendars by. The One who never went to college or to seminary. The One who never wrote a book, owned a home, or traveled any farther than two hundred miles from His birthplace in Bethlehem. He had no trophies to put on a table, no resumes or awards to frame and put on the wall. He did leave a crown behind—a crown of thorns. All the shakers and movers of any society, throughout any time in history, probably wouldn’t have taken His call. He had no credentials.
Yet here we go again—preparing to celebrate His birth.
And the timing couldn’t be better. We’re so close. Yet for some of us—we’re so far. So far away. And so the timing couldn’t be better. A time for us to be reminded once again of “Immanuel”—God is with us.
We’re so close.
Yet personal and professional disappointments abound. The economy still wreaks havoc on our attitude as we awake to each morning and on the hope we hold onto for our tomorrows. Our idols still fall off the pedestals we put them on—forgetting they are fallible just like the rest of us.
And our runs to championships and corporate achievement which we believe at times will make everything in life all right, come up tearfully short. And we watch as others who win it all, hold a trophy high or pad their bank account. And we as they acknowledge the cheers, praise and compliments of others, with a smile that soon fades into a sense of emptiness and lack of fulfilment as they realize it’s not there.
It’s a time when the priorities of our lives should come into clearer focus through the reminders of our all too frequent moments of falling short and wrong choices.
Once again, it seems, that the timing couldn’t be better to be reminded of the that day over two thousand years ago when God set two tiny feet among us in an obscure stable in a place most of us will never see. A Baby, in a manger, in a stable, in Bethlehem, for you and for me and for all the world.
Pretty amazing actually.
And we’re so close.
And I wonder if we will see it in the midst of all the other stuff and distractions now associated with the Christmas season. I wonder if we will sense again and anew the life-changing majesty of the birth of Christ—God’s own Son. The Babe of Bethlehem. God. Immanuel. Wonderful. Counselor. Mighty God. Everlasting Father. Prince of Peace.
We’re so close we can almost throw a rock at it. I wonder if we’ll hit it. We need to—our lives depend upon it.
We need to embrace the moment—the Baby—in all its amazing glory and wonder—Immanuel—God is with us! It will make all the difference in our lives—and in the world.
For today, tomorrow and forever, and ever and ever and ever!
Amen!
And—Amen!
In His Name—Scott
Copyright 2013. Scott L. Whitaker. All rights reserved.
