Count Down to Christmas - December 1, 2022

It's November and we just turned the air conditioner back on. Welcome to Pennsylvania! Several years back, we had snow on Halloween. Just last Saturday, Scott and I checked and triple-checked the forecast, making plans for some of our rainy day projects. I awakened that morning to sunlight streaming through the windows and birds singing Sunshine on My Shoulders. (We have some very talented birds in our neck of the hoods.) Unpredictable, right? And who likes that? We much prefer things to be structured, planned, normal. 

Lord willing, you will be reading this in December, sitting down with a nice cup of hot cocoa and taking a break from your hall decking; I, however, am just starting to think about Thanksgiving plans, and writing this in anticipation of the holiday season. We expect it, prepare for it, even count on it. But the truth is, calendars can be just as fallible as weather forecasters. Alright, maybe not just as fallible-- Is it my imagination, or have they gotten so much worse? --but let's face it, erasers were invented for a reason. Plans change. 

But there's a plan that hasn't changed, that didn't change. It's a plan that was prophesied in the Garden of Eden:

And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her Seed;
He shall bruise your head,
And you shall bruise His heel.” ~ Genesis 3:15

How long had Adam and Eve lived in the garden before the serpent came looking to get ahold of the glory that belongs to God alone? Weeks? Months? I don't want to be common, but they were created as full-grown adults, naked, and with no television: as of the moment they fell to temptation, they had no children. Get my drift? If that's not enough, how long can you go without one prideful or disobedient act? I think it stands to reason, they hadn't been occupants of Eden too long. But here they were, the first human beings, early in the game, and God gives them-- and all of us, by proxy --a promise: His Seed will bruise (fatally) the head of the serpent's seed. 

Quick story: My mom's family was a tough bunch of characters. The stories they could tell! One moved into an old house in Maryland. His wife was cooking dinner one evening when a snake came slithering out of the fireplace. They were a little unnerved, but my cousin beat it's head in with a shovel. After that, snakes became more of a nuisance than a shock. More than one snake met it's demise under the heel of my cousin's boot. 

Back to our prophecy, though. Do you see that capital S, there. Bible translators use that to show us there is more in this passage than just the simple threat of snake bites and annoyed husbands squashing black racers. There are the words that follow: He will bruise your head; you will bruise His heel. There is a single Man, a Representative for all mankind, a Victor. That Representative is Jesus, who will come as a God-Man, showing us how to walk out the life He will purchase for us with His very blood. Thousands of years after the words were spoken in Eden, Jesus was born. Thousands of years after His birth, life, death, and resurrection, human beings are being reborn by the Holy Spirit. 

So, wear a sweater, make your holiday plans; I hope it all goes as planned. But, only Jesus is The Promise you can count on!

A Most Beautiful Example

Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. ~ Hebrews 12:1-3

"Jesus showed up for worship today," I wrote in my journal. Now, I'm well aware, Jesus shows up any time worship is happening (Psalm 22:3 says God inhabits the praises of His people), but this was quite different. One Sunday morning, not long after our congregation had begun to sing, a man-- very large, with wild hair, toting bags and an umbrella --lumbered down the center aisle of our church and fell on his face at the altar rail. After a few moments, he made his way to the back where he sang his heart out for a bit and disappeared. That's not the type of event that causes a stir at our church-- in fact, I never heard anyone even comment on it-- but it struck me, however, as most beautiful. 

I'd never seen this man before. He's not a "regular," as they say, during worship; but in that sanctuary, in the middle of a group of strangers, this man had nothing on his mind but reaching the place where he could fall on his face before the Living God. Imagine! He didn't stop to place his bags or his burdens on a nearby chair; he took everything he had straight to the place he knew God was present and awaiting him. To me, his hair looked unkempt and his clothing seemed haphazard, but he didn't care what I saw. The thud he made when he hit the floor made me wonder if he'd hurt himself, but he didn't care what was going through my head. His singing was angelic, but he wasn't interested in auditioning --except for an audience of One. Single-mindedness. Commitment to purpose. Lack of pretense. Unsophistication. Authenticity. Travail. All of these words come to mind when I think of those few moments that Sunday, of one man's desire to meet with the Savior, the Friend of sinners. 

Hebrews says we need to get rid of anything that would keep us from racing toward Jesus. Fear, self-consciousness, the right clothes or the right haircut, strangers, the bags that tend to weigh us down, the threat of a little rain-- anything! The witnesses that surround us are those who have gone before, those who have done exactly what God, through the author of Hebrews tells us to do. The greatest witness of them all? Jesus! And though He has not yet returned to this world in body, He set the example for us two-thousand years ago. He is still setting it today.