God centered anticipation – the dawning of a new dispensation

Merry Advent Season

And this is the sign unto you: Ye shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger.

Luke 2:12 ASV

December always catches us by surprise. Sometimes one can get irritated if you allow it to catch you on the wrong side of life. Having a God centered anticipation corrects the attitude. Most didn’t catch the birth of Christ, it was a uneventful moment in the chaos of life. Others were rudely interrupted so much that it altered their course in life. Heaven long ago prepared for an Incarnation, but Earth was not quite ready. (Interpreters Bible) It was the dawning of a new dispensation for when it’s midnight all around the daystar comes silently.

When God does a marvelous work, such as may amaze all heaven and earth, He commands silence all around, sends forth the still small voice, and then sets some feeble instrument to work—and straightway it is done! Man toils and pants, and after all effects but little; the Creator, in the silent majesty of power, noiseless yet resistless, achieves by a word the infinite wonders of omnipotence! Horace Bonar

I pray you will allow yourself to be caught up in anticipation! Come beggar, bag lady, tramp mendicant and allow your crud to be washed; washed into blood red. To look again at the simple things of life, to pause at the manger and be part of its birth. Standing there in the muck and the smell of the stall centers me back to it all. Christ can come anytime anywhere anyplace-he is not set off by the unexpected. He isn’t in the crowded inn full of the “other” noises. He bleeds out to the simple; the ones under the loads of life. God comes quiet and comes small. Small enough to understand us, small enough to bend and listen to our sorrow. Love comes anticipating a reception – in the room all quiet. Meet him in this Advent season.