"It's the most wonderful time of the year!" Okay, I am an eternal lover of seasons, so while I think this is the most wonderful.time of the year, I also thought early fall, mid fall, and late fall were, and I will love the later winter months and Valentines Day and the melting into spring, and the joyfully somber days leading up to a glorious Resurrection Sunday, and then the freedom and energy of summertime... turns out I just enjoy the passage of time.
Traditionally, we head to the west side of the green hip-roofed barn on the Friday following Thanksgiving. We haul the colorful tote boxes, some labeled "Christmas," some mislabeled from past use, and crowd them all into our little catch-all room. When the house has been tidied and vacuumed, it is deemed decoration-ready, and we get going.
This year was slightly different. Five daughters stayed with my parents overnight in Wyoming after Thanksgiving, I spent all day Friday sealing, priming, and painting drywall and ceilings in the two bathrooms in the new house, and the boys went out and got several strings of Christmas lights so they could decorate their own room (yes, that tiny room does look like the Las Vegas strip).
Saturday morning, the girls were home, but with calf prices this year, and a heightened sense of awareness that tax time is coming, I immersed myself in tax receipts and accounting programs all day, while the progeny took to the boxes and began to spin the whirlwind of Christmas joy. As they worked, sometimes happily, sometimes bickering, one thing that I heard repeated time and again was, "Oh, remember this?!?"
And as Ol' Handsome preached on the first Sunday of Advent, and as the Prophecy/Hope was lighted, I realized that this is part of what makes Christmas so powerful. Remember! These decorations and gifts of pasts years, put away 11 months of the year, seem frozen in time, like a palpable Brigadoon. Those who cross that bridge, as it were, in the unpacking of and decorating with these treasures, seem to instantly be transported to a time set apart from all the rest of the year, yet somehow tied to all the Christmasses Yet to Come. There is a pervading sense of hope and excitement, just from the opening of the boxes of Christmas Past.
For some people, the mere mention of prophecy is cringe-worthy. We have some idea of a slightly purple-haired television preacher from the sixties or seventies expostulating on things yet to come, or perhaps someone wrongly using prophecy to proclaim good things about to manifest in a person's life (yikes, bad doctrine). But it is way cooler than that. Prophecy is how God, the Almighty, One True God, taunts the little-g gods, the demonic entities, the fallen angels who desire worship and who have revealed themselves to the world as Molech, Asherah, Thor, Zeus, Osiris, and any other pantheon of names, faking to be God and desiring to take worship from Him.
What is the litmus test Elyon, the One True God who we worship, gives?
"Set forth your case, says the Lord;
bring your proofs, says the King of Jacob.
Let them bring them, and tell us what is to happen.
Tell us the former things, what they are,
That we may consider them,
That we may know their outcome;
Or declare to us the things to come.
Tell us what is to come hereafter,
That we may know that you are gods;
That we may br dismayed and be terrified.
Behold, you are nothing,
And your work is less than nothing:
An abomination is he who chooses you.
....
Who declared it from the beginning, that we might know,
And beforehand, that we might say, 'He is right?
There was none who declared it, none who proclaimed,
None who heard your words.
I was the first yo say to Zion, 'Behold, here they are!'
And I give to Jerusalem a Herald of good news.
But when I look, there is no one;
Among these there is no counselor
Who, when I ask, gives an answer.
Behold, they are all a delusion;
Their works are nothing;
Their metal images are empty wind."
-Isaiah 41: 21-24;26-29
Okay, I am a somewhat competitive person, and I greatly value sportsmanship. But when we are dealing with eternal souls, and the God of intense love is speaking with lesser beings who seek the destruction of the humans He created in His image, when we know that the Thief and his minions come only to steal, kill, and destroy, but Elykn, our God, comes that we may have abundant LIFE... I rather enjoy that we get this little slice of holy taunting.
As we enter Advent, and all the gloriousness therein, and we see the many prophecies foretelling of the Messiah that were fulfilled jn Jesus, rejoice! Prophecy is our guarantee that God is who He says He is, that He can indeed be trusted to do the things He says He will. He will truly redeem and restore us, blot out our sins, take away our shame, care for the widow and be a Father to the fatherless. As surely as He came the first time, He will come again. And in this assurance of His steadfastness, we find great HOPE!
Merry Christmas, indeed!