Christmas Musings #5 Time Travel

 ⁵⁶ Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” John 8:56 English Standard Version

               Advent calls us to slip the bonds of our human concept of linear time and participate in a sort of time-travel. We do this through faith, as did Abraham. I’ve always been a fan of science-fiction, being a “Trekie” before being a “Trekie” was cool. I’m such a geek that my brother wisely looks upon any of my recommendations for a science-fiction movie with narrowed eyes. He knows through long experience that I do not discriminate much when it comes to science-fiction. I pretty much like it all. So, when scripture points out that through God I can see from afar and in some ephemeral fashion participate, I’m all in.

               So, each Advent season, I join Abraham and other faithful and view Advent up close and personal despite my linear time distance. Of course, I exist some two-thousand years after advent. I’m not talking about some mystical out-of-body experience…I don’t think. Each Christmas, as the day draws near, I spend more and more time in the environs of that small Judean hamlet. I read and consider all the events leading up to the incarnation and birth of Jesus. I join with the host of believers, some looking forward with others looking back. Together we make the trek to Bethlehem to worship the newborn king.

               While scripture does not call us to a specific feast or day dedicated to celebrating the birth of Jesus, it does encourage us to contemplate the importance of the incarnation. Through the incarnation God comes near, fulfilling a journey started long before the Lord spoke the world into existence. “³ And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.” Genesis 1:3 These words set of a chain of events that culminate in a humble birth in a quiet backwater hamlet and ultimately in an empty tomb. All this that I might enjoy a new life here and in the hereafter.

               So yes in a very special way, each year I engage in mental and spiritual time-travel. I look back and wonder how and why. How could God compress Himself into the form of a small baby? How could He divest Himself of all that power and glory, accepting the limitations of an infant boy? More importantly, why? Why would He place so much value on me? Why make such a long journey just to save this miserable wretch? Why would He choose such a lowly birth and life? He embraced a birth attended by shepherds. Sometime later, He did receive a group of magi, who brought gifts, worshiped, and then left. The creator and sustainer of the universe chose to live thirty years or so in obscurity, ignored by the very people He came to save. He worked as a carpenter, or craftsman, not an especially glamorous occupation; yet, surprisingly apropos for a being of such astounding creative ability and force. Such improbable events bear deep contemplation. What am I to make of this? So, each year I make the trek. I sit on a stony hillside and marvel at the angelic host. I go to the stable and wonder at the unbelievable birth of the Christ-Child, who set aside all for me. I invite you to take a pause in the mad rush of contemporary Christmas and join me in quiet observation of such amazing events of long ago.