Sometimes in life, we feel that our prayers are met with a heavy silence.
And in our culture of instant gratification and immediate response, we don’t take kindly to that silence from God.
The past few months have been a particularly difficult and challenging season for us, culminating in emergency surgery for our two-day-old grandson, a three-week stay in neonatal intensive care, and a diagnosis of Cystic Fibrosis.
As we walked through each difficulty, and especially as we prayed for and hurt with our children and first grandchild, I found myself begging God for “a word, or a sign.”
And then, a side note in a sermon brought me up short. It was this: When God told Zacharias that he would father a son, and Zacharias was struck dumb, it had been literally thousands of years since God had spoken to men. For thousands of years, His people had worshipped Him in the temple and served Him according to ancient instructions in their scriptures...and not heard one word from Him.
For those of us who are battling difficulty, disease, or disappointment, for those of us who feel that we are just muddling through, those who, like me, have been asking God to give us a word, a sign, the Christmas story holds a magnificent message. God is no longer silent, nor will He ever be again.
Here is the word we long for:
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.
John 1:14
Here is the sign we so desperately seek:
This shall be a sign unto you. You shall find the Babe, wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
Luke 2:12
Praying that in Jesus you will truly find everything you seek –
Martha
Change. We’ve heard that word a lot lately. President-elect Barack Obama won the recent election with a promise that he would be an agent of change in the White House. His opponent, John McCain, proudly sported the label of “maverick”, seeking to project an image of a candidate who would have a different approach to things.
As powerful as our heads of government are, the real change that they can affect is miniscule compared to what happened in Bethlehem over two thousand years ago. So many pre-conceived ideas and comfortable methodologies were forever altered when Jesus was born in that manger.
Even the most faithful were shaken when He was born. Their long-anticipated Messiah arrived in the most humble of circumstances. Quietly, without fanfare, a King was born. That was a stunning change from what had been expected. He lived His life in a carpenter’s shop, not a palace. He didn’t introduce His ministry with a blaring, extravagant campaign. Even His death produced a drastic change of peoples’ perspectives. The cross, once a morbid representation of death, was indelibly altered to become a symbol of His love.
Jesus’ words provoked even more radical changes in the traditional way of thinking. Love your enemies? How was that even possible? He said the last will be first and the first will be last. He proclaimed a kingdom where the meek would inherit the earth, the persecuted would be rewarded, and the merciful would be the ones who obtained mercy.
But the greatest change of all that Jesus introduced was what He brought you and me. Because He was born, because of what He had to offer us, our lives, destined for destruction and death, were suddenly overflowing with hope and promise. Beyond His miraculous birth and His stirring words was His love. Emmanuel – “God with us” – sought us in order to change us. His changes are not surface or superficial. He came to bring us a revolutionary way of living, today and eternally.
