Day 16 Great Anticipation

For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it. Matthew 13:7 English Standard Version

As a little boy growing up in Abilene, Texas much of my year revolved around Christmas, not in a spiritual sense, but as a center of excitement and anticipation. Each year the mailman delivered wondrous visions of possibilities in the form of J.C. Penny’s and Sears catalogs. These hefty tomes provided hours of entertainment. My brother and I would pour over them, examining each full-color slick page in the toy section, turning down the corners of pages with particularly good offerings. One of my personal favorites was the GI Joe section. I yearned, lusted really, for a complete collection. One year a GI Joe in a real wooden footlocker showed up under my tree. My friends and I spent hours fighting back hordes of imagined enemies with our GI Joes. Little did I know that I would end up spending twenty-seven years pursuing my childhood pastime. I do not know what became of my GI Joe, his footlocker, and the associated paraphernalia. They disappeared along with the other oddments of my childhood, but the sense of wonder and anticipation surrounding Christmas remains.

I still enjoy the lights, trimmed trees, music, presents, and food. This afternoon we gathered, enjoyed a brunch, trimmed our tree, and watched two Christmas movies. However, the feeling of anticipation remains the great joy of Christmas. Each year the possibilities brought by a renewed revealed incarnation grow within me. I look forward to God with us. Yes, I know that the incarnation took place two-thousand years ago, but each year He comes again in my heart. Like the little boy of long ago, sitting on a blue couch turning the shiny pages of a catalog, I turn the pages of the book which offers wondrous possibilities. Jesus is coming. His arrival changes things, turns back the hands of time to a long-ago place where sin and hate did not reign, where God and man walked in the cool of the evening.