|
Grace, mercy and peace be to you …
Ah, it’s almost 11:30 … things are finally beginning to quiet down; most of the children are in bed. Just about all the stores are finally closed. Most people who are still up are sitting … not standing.
It’s a more subdued night than this hour on New Year’s eve. There’s almost some reverence about it. And if it were clear outside, some of the brightest stars in the night sky will be plainly in view.
That passage in Luke’s gospel about Mary pondering all the things that had just happened in her heart seems to be most fitting at this hour. In her case, those things included an angel’s visit, dealing with her betrothal to Joseph, spending time with her cousin Elizabeth, her last-minute trip to Bethlehem, the stable, the birth, and finally the visit of the shepherds ….
Now it was time to just slowly exhale and let all those things just sink in … especially, finally, this visit by these shepherds. Rough men who’d said they had heard about the birth of her child. A child whom they called the Christ, the Messiah, as they’d heard from an Angel, no less, accompanied by the Heavenly Host.
If Mary had had any concerns during the past week about God being distant and far off in her time of deepest need, well, here had come some most unexpected messengers of just the opposite. God was very much present and keeping all His promises.
It was true, God had not given Mary and Joseph an easy road up to this point. And at the same time, what an awesome responsibility He had given them as well … to be in charge of caring not just for any baby boy … but God himself in the flesh. And to start off under such less than normal circumstances. Not many babies were born in stables and laid in mangers, even back then.
And so, we can imagine that Mary’s thoughts might have flowed along the same lines as our service has this evening. First, thoughts along the lines like our hymns of praise for what God had done. Maybe then, saying to herself some of the Scriptures that she’d heard in the Synagogue and memorized. Her thoughts, her scriptures expressing simple Joy and praise to God … for, with His help, she had delivered a healthy son.
We might be able to identify or empathize with some of her feelings. Some of us not with the birth of a child in the past few hours … but indeed, sharing her joy and praise for all God’s grace and blessings.
For us, perhaps, praise to God for all the Christmases long ago when we dressed up like one of the Christmas characters in the Sunday School Christmas Program … or maybe when we played one of those cameo roles while singing “Away in a Manger.”
Or, maybe, praise to God for all those Christmases we came and watched our own children sing as we sang along with them, silently, “Away in a Manger” …
Or maybe even praise to God for the gift of being here earlier this evening with our Grand children or great Grandchildren … hearing once again, with them, that familiar, majestic, Gospel account of Jesus’ birth from Luke, Chapter 2.
Count them up. How many Christmases has it been for you? How many years of God’s blessings? … How many things to ponder in your heart this night?
You know, honestly, you don’t get to do very much pondering when the kids are around. Kids are always living in the now, or in the future … “Has Santa come yet?”
Not that we want live in the past, but in order to ponder … that’s where we often go. Back to considering the path that has brought us to where we are today. Back to all those twists and turns that looked so frightening when they came into our lives.
Back to all those moments of joy, when those came as well. Back to those times of noted accomplishment for us before our families and before our peers, those times of blessing, as well as those times of sadness.
I’d love to just let us all reminisce for the next few minutes, but reality beckons, and time marches on, as the saying goes.
And so, in light of this pondering, let us consider this thought. One of the things that we pondered last year was this question: What is more influential in the development of your relationship with God … things in your past? … or things in your future?
Now, after talking about all this pondering, we might be sorely tempted to say, “things of the Past.”
After all, that’s where our faith comes from, that’s were our faith was nourished … that’s where our faith was tested and tried … in the past. That’s where you and I began to get to know and understand God from His Word and from own experiences with Him in our lives.
And all that’s true. However, the truth is… our relationship with God is more about our future than it is about our past.
You see, God did not create us for “time.” He created us for eternity. Could you imagine, sitting in heaven and spending all your time there thinking about your past, your time here on earth?
Heaven’s no. And so God doesn’t want us to live in our past either. Because there’s a danger in that … and that’s letting our past shape our future.
And there’s a great temptation to do just that. We are beset by things in our past like handicaps, troubled family backgrounds, failures, shame over a personal or family secret, and abuse … things that we feel are shaping us, keeping us, from being whom we’d really like to be.
But the past doesn’t stop with bad things … things like pride, success, fame, recognition, and excessive wealth …can be things in our past that will also strongly direct and shape how we live our lives in the here and now. (E.G. 57)
But in either case, when we allow the things in our past to control our future … we’re doing what? We’re centering our lives on things that have, or will, pass away.
The great joke, the irony, that’s often said, usually at funeral visitations, is that “if I had my life to live over, I’d spend a lot more time at the job or in the office.” Right. //
It’s on those occasions when the stark reality of the death intrudes on our daily routines that we see some of our priorities for what they are.
How many of us might honestly say instead, “I wished I would have spent an hour a day with God… in His Word and in Prayer.”
That’s centering our lives on our future. Because our Future is not of this earth … but with God, forever. So when we let the hurts or injustices we may have suffered in our past focus our attention on ourselves …
… when we let our successes in this life drive us to achieve even more … what have we done? We’ve let time and the things of this earth win over eternity and the things of heaven.
St. Paul wrote: “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 3:14)
St. Paul’s goal, his priority in life, was to have a relationship with God in Christ … and through that relationship … become more like Him.
Paul was letting God shape him daily, in the present … to become more like Jesus. The past was simply that, the past. The future was focused on the things of God … things of eternal worth … not the things of time or of this earth.
What a legacy it is … to leave behind a life that made an eternal difference in the lives of others. And you don’t have to be a pastor or a professional church worker to have that kind of legacy.
As we’ve said … God is always at work around each of us. At work meaning, growing His kingdom. And we each have the privilege and the opportunity to join Him in what He is doing.
Let’s go back to Mary, as we left her pondering all those things in her heart. We mentioned “all those things” including the Angel Gabriel’s visitation … the issues involving her marriage to Joseph, the inopportune trip to Bethlehem, the out-of-the-way maternity ward … and the joyful, but unexpected visit of the shepherds …
Taking a temporal look at all those things, Mary might have just been thankful that the day and the delivery were finally over. Thankful for the assurance of God’s presence, and yet, maybe a bit frazzled by all the twists and turns … and maybe even a bit fearful of what was to come based on all that had just happened.
But pondering it all from a heavenly perspective … she could see that there was not one obstacle she couldn’t overcome with God’s help … And that what had just happened had already made an eternal difference in the lives of some the least expected people, the shepherds.
And if this was what God did in just the first hours … she might have been pondering what else God was going to accomplish as the days ahead unfolded.
Let us pray tonight … that each of us might go home this evening … and ponder not just the past … but also … ponder what God has in store for each of us tomorrow… and the day after… as He is growing us, shaping us, into our own eternities.
In Him Amen.
|