The Nativity

Christmas time is here...snowflakes everywhere...

Or so the song playing at the local grocery store claims. However, this is definitely the greenest Christmas season ever for me! I'm adjusting to the lack of white stuff...not just that it's not on the ground, but that I haven't SEEN it yet. The leaves are still vibrant red, orange and yellow on the trees. Pansies bloom in flower boxes. But Christmas isn't about any of that.

I went to see the movie "Maria" or "The Nativity Story" (or whatever it's called in English) yesterday. I love movies that make me look at something I've taken for granted in a whole new way. Yes, yes, I know it's not completely Biblical. I know the Wise Men didn't come to the stable. And there were several other "poetic licences" taken. Still, what struck me was how these great "giants" of faith like Mary, Elizabeth, Joseph, and Zechariah, still had opportunity to doubt. I've always thought Zechariah was just stupid for not believing the angel when he talked to him. It had never occurred to me that, even in the Bible when it says "the word of the Lord came," that He came in a still small voice. He spoke through an angel to Mary, to Zechariah, and to Joseph in a dream. How often I have said, "If there was an angel talking to me, I'd believe it was God! Until then, I'm not so sure..." But now I think it's more about having eyes to see and ears to hear -- eyes that see with faith. Mary responded in faith to the angel, saying, "Let it be done to me according to your word." Zechariah responded with doubt to the SAME angel. Zechariah's "sign" that it was really God was that he couldn't speak for months! I'm not so sure I'd want a sign like that.

I am challenged to trust God and His Word. I am challenged by the fact that even though Mary and Joseph were completely in the will of God and she even had GOD in her stomach...things still went so wrong for her. Why did God have the baby come as they were arriving in Bethlehem? Couldn't he have waited until a more convenient time? (And if the baby was born in the stable that night, she logically would have been in labor for the last leg of the journey!) This challenges my idea that when I'm walking with God "things will work out." They will "work out" for His glory, but they will not always "work out" for my ease and comfort. Will I trust Him even in those times? This is the message of Christmas for me this year -- that on the night of Christ's birth everything had seemed to go so wrong, and yet God was working to make it all come out right, for His glory! When my life doesn't seem to make sense (and everyone's lacks sense from time to time), this truth makes sense of it all.

If only I have eyes of faith to see His glory be revealed.