Let me begin by wishing all my faithful followers a very Blessed and Holy Christmas. I am grateful for each of you who by the hundreds follow this blog weekly. From all over the world you have blessed me with your comments and humble me by your belief I have some thing worth your time to read, Blessings, Deacon Dave

C Cycle – Christmas 24

Jn. 1:1-18

They believed in God’s promise, and they waited.  Generation after generation, decade after decade and when He finally arrived, they did not get what they expected.  They had to wait another three decades and when it happened, they were confused.  Expectations can disappoint, particularly at this time of Christmas when we want something but do not receive it.  Perhaps next year or the next gift will be the one.

What is it the psalmist wrote about waiting?  The psalmist wrote continually about waiting.  Could it be because God is always waiting for us to respond, to understand and to believe.  Perhaps that is why God inspired the psalmist to write “…Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage Ps. 27:14. How long Lord must we wait?  How hard it is to believe and trust while we wait.  Or have we forgotten God’s promise that “…those who wait for the Lord will inherit the earth Ps. 37:9. It is not the earth we want Lord, but we want our pain to go away.  The only way anyone of us can wait is by having faith. Total and complete faith demands our hope is founded on how much we trust God. I wait for the LORD, my soul does wait, and in His words do, I hope. Ps. 130:5.

Waiting seems to be the one thing we have trouble doing.  Human nature has us seeking out the shortest line in the grocery stores or as we approach the tool booths on the turnpike or any checkout station.  Just imagine the excitement of the Israelites as the Shepherds shard their story about the angel appearing to them.  Shared their experience of Jesus as they knelt before Him in the manger.  But their excitement was short lived.  The “messiah” disappeared and did not emerge again for three decades.  Remember those in Nazareth when they heard Jesus preach as He began His ministry said, “is this not the son of Joseph.” 

Jesus was there in their midst, but they did not connect that young boy with the proclamation of the angels.  It is easy for us to get caught up in the Christmas season and ignore what is right in our midst – Jesus Christ the Son of God who came to earth to reconcile us to the Father.  We have grown up knowing who Jesus is and what He came to accomplish.  We prayed to Him, honored Him, and worshipped Him.  Those are the easy parts of being a Christian.  Yet, if we think about it, we are still waiting.  Not for the Messiah, for we acknowledge Jesus is the Messiah. Born this day and died on the cross thirty three years later.  We acknowledge He will come again, and we will encounter him when He comes in glory or at the hour of our death.  We are comfortable in our faith and our belief, but we are missing something.  Yes, we are as dependent on Christ for our spiritual lives as Jesus was on Mary and Joseph for His physical life. Jesus invites us to come to Him, acknowledge Him, surrender to Him, and allow Him to dramatically change us. That is why He came and is still coming to those who open their hearts and receive Him.  

In one way we are waiting for Him to touch us as He did the lepers.  To give us sight as He did the blind man.  To open our ears to hear and respond to His words.  To come to us as He did the woman at the well.  We are waiting for Him, while He is inviting us.     

Christmas is an easy, joyful, and distracting season.  It lulls us into a blissful state causing us to ignore the message that God sent to us that day two thousand years ago.  It was a message that told the Israelites the wait was over.  Christ is waiting for us to respond to His coming by offering Him something more precious than the gold, myrrh, and frankincense – our hearts.  The problem we have is we still look for the easy quick path to respond to Christ.   

God desires more from us than showing up. God wants us to surrender our hearts. Surrendering demands submission of our desires and for us to embracing the desires of God.  We need to learn lessons from Mary and Joseph. Each of them did not understand much of what was happening but they submitted to God’s will trusting He would guide them and protect them.  

Christmas offers us an invitation to stop and reflect on your own response to the child in the manger.  We can ooh and awe or we can say I accept your sacrifice and will nurture you, embrace you. I will allow you to feed me instead of me trying to keep you wrapped in swaddling clothes.  That baby grew up and became a man who came out of the desert and declared the Kingdom of God is at hand and showed us by signs and wonders what God desires for us. 

It is time to invite Jesus into our hearts, our lives and become followers who have waited for the moment of our own awakening.  That moment when we like Mary say yes to God and submit to a life of constant challenges as we walk with Jesus.  It is time we like Joseph hear the voice of God telling us to embrace the unknown life of following God’s will.  It is time for us to be mother and father to Jesus by following God’s will for our salvation (Mt. 12:50).

Come Lord Jesus, Come and be born in our hearts.