ADVENT MEDITATIONS No.33
33. Into Waiting
Matt 2:21-23 So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel . But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth.
We’ve seen over these past weeks that it’s all about God communicating with ordinary people and doing extraordinary things with them, as He brings His Son onto the earth. We’ve commented on how it’s so easy to become over familiar with the story and lose the wonder of what was happening. It’s a story of angels and of miracles of conception, of movement around the country at the whim of an emperor, and then out of the country by the guidance of God. Yes, we saw all the preamble, the birth, the shepherds, the wise men, the welcoming team in the temple and the flight to Egypt.
It’s like we’ve come to the closing scene of an epic film. All the big events have happened and now it’s anti-climax at the end. If you saw the Lord of the Rings films, you may remember at the end of the first film, after all the fighting, the hero and his helper slip quietly away in a little boat. After all the things that had gone before, it’s now a quiet, low-key ending – but we all knew there were lots more to come! That’s how it is at the end of what we refer to as ‘The Christmas Story’.
Joseph’s had his dream with an angel and starts to take the little family home. When he gets back to Israel he hears that the Herod dynasty still continues and so keeps on going, back up north to Galilee, to Nazareth. There’s mention of a dream – whether it’s the original one saying go home, or another one, is not clear. The fact is they reach home in the north and that’s where they settle. For us, in a few days time, Christmas and all its activities will be a past memory, and we look forward to just getting back on with life after the holidays, back to normality. That’s possibly how it was with Mary and Joseph. The great adventure, all the travelling, has come to an end, and so now they can settle down to normal life as a family. That’s how it will be for twelve years, until Jesus gives his mother cause to wonder some more (see Lk 2:41-52). It will be about thirty years before it all really starts to happen and until then it’s just a time of waiting, although they might not have been very sure about that. But that’s how life with God is: exciting one day, unsure the next.
Well, the year is almost at an end; in a day or so it will be New Year’s Day, and another year awaits us. What will it hold? We don’t know. What we do know though, is that God is there working out His purposes in perfect precision – which often means slowly – and so the call on us as we come to the end of this Advent series, is to remember the truths we have learned and to so remain faithful to the revelation we’ve had so far, and to watch and wait and be obedient as He leads us out in His purposes.