Monday, Monday

"...can't trust that day."

Sometimes when you roll over into Monday, it's a real blessing. Maybe you had a tough time the day before and knowing you have a day to reorient helps a great deal. Just having the space to reflect can soften the previous day's experience if it's bad, or you can continue to bask in the glow if it was a great day.

As a pastor, you are so tied into the events and people of the church you serve that if you aren't careful, you tend to kick yourself around quite a bit. You know and give assent to the fact that God is sovereign, and His will is being done, but if you didn't feel as though you did your best the day before, then you spend Monday thinking, if only I had worked harder, prayed more, not used that illustration, used more Scripture, used less Scripture... well, you get the idea.

But most Mondays serve as waves on the shoreline, and whatever you scribbled the day before in the sand gets blurred and erased.

Not today.

That sermon stunk. Just plain stunk. It never cleared the "so what?" bar, much less the "now what?" one.

But I can deal.

So then I open an email from Ray Pritchard and find that he's done what I wasn't able to, in the way I was hoping to do it. Thanks a lot God. :)

A decree from Caesar Augustus.
An angel appearing to Mary.
A virgin becoming pregnant.
An angel coming to Joseph in a dream.
A baby who will be called Immanuel.
A mysterious star in the east.
A group of magi showing up in Jerusalem.
Angels appearing to shepherds.
A trip to Bethlehem.
An inn that was full.
A stable that was available.
A babe wrapped in rags and placed in a feeding trough.
A star that led the magi to the right house in Bethlehem.
Gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
A dying king who tried to kill the baby.
A desperate journey to Egypt.
Another journey to Nazareth.

And think of what the Bible says about this baby:

"He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end" (Luke 1:32).

"You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21).

"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14).

" For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6).

Pretty amazing stuff, if you stop to think about it. What are the chances that all of those things that had to happen in exactly the right way would have happened? That a pagan emperor would issue a decree at just the right moment in history, when the Pax Romana was in full force, when the world was yearning restlessly for deliverance, that angels would show up to a young man and a young woman, that they would believe the angels, that the virgin would become pregnant, that Joseph would decide not to divorce her, that the star would shine in the east, that the magi would travel hundreds of miles seeking the baby, and all of it would finally focus on a stable outside an inn in the "little town of Bethlehem," where the most incredible event in history took place.

C. S. Lewis says it this way:

The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares the way for this, or results from this.

He is entirely right about that. Sometimes we focus on peripheral questions (how did Jesus turn water into wine?) that distract us from the central truth of our faith. We believe God became a man. That the Creator became part of the creation. That the infinite became finite. That Almighty God took on the form of a man and was born as a tiny baby. This is the central truth of our faith.

I think Shawn is on to something when he uses the phrase "an accident from God." That's what Christmas is. It's an "accident from God," which means of course that it's no accident at all but it sure seems that way from the outside looking in.

It's personal, it's Biblical, it's really good. Everything I was trying to do.