December 21stIt's Christmas!
It's Christmas!
“It’s Christmas!” These are the words I have heard nearly every day for the last month as Luka, my youngest son, jumps out of bed and runs to see if there are any Christmas presents under the tree.
The look of confusion and disappoint on his face as he stops and looks at the barren underbelly of our wonderfully decorated tree is very evident to all who see him, but it is short lived. All it takes to turn his frown upside down is to remind him that while Christmas may not be here yet, it IS coming. This reassurance quickly brings back his joyful exuberance, as he begins describing (sometimes in great detail) what it will look like on Christmas day once the presents arrive.
Looking at his excitement now, I cannot wait to see how it will grow even more so when, in just a few short days, I get to tell him, “The wait is over, Christmas is here”!
As I watch my son’s joyful anticipation of Christmas, I find myself reflecting on it was like for those in Israel who were waiting centuries for the Promised One. Generation after generation, the prophecy of a Messiah passed down. Each generation hopeful that this coming would happen in their lifetime, but day after day, year after year and century after century…nothing.
Yet, even as the promise went unfulfilled for so long, generation after generation, the promise continued to be passed down. I can picture the promise being passed down with words similar to my own, “the day is not here yet, but it WILL come.”
There was more than 700 years between Isaiah’s first prophesy about the coming Saviour. When the time finally came, I imagine an overwhelming sense of jubilation. Thought of in this way, it’s easy to conceive why John the Baptist would leap for joy in his mother’s womb, when a pregnant Mary visited Elizabeth (Lk. 156). As Brian Zahnd notes it in his book The Anticipated Christ, in this in this “beautiful picture of irrepressible joy…the anticipation of the coming of the Kingdom of God is marked by unbridled elation.”
This is the kind of joy I see in my son every morning, and it is this kind of joy I hope we all experience as we, together, countdown the final days till we get to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. In Jesus, the promise has been fulfilled. The Kingdom is here. LET US CELEBRATE!
A joyous Christmas season to you all,