The Twenty First Day of Advent, 2016

Saturday, December 17, 2016

For behold, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy.  Luke 1:44

I’ve read this verse hundreds of times, and always thought it wonderful that the baby Elizabeth carried, the one who would one day be called “John the Baptist,” recognized the voice of the mother of the Lord Jesus Christ. Later, Luke tells us that after John’s birth, The hand of the Lord was upon him [John].  But here, while he was still in his mother’s womb, it’s obvious that the Holy Spirit was already making John aware of the Lord.

As I read this portion of the Christmas narrative again, I actually thought, “That’s great, and I’m glad. But what does that say to me today?”

Perhaps more than I ever knew!  When I hear again this year Emmanuel, will something inside me – in my heart – leap for joy that God is with me? When I hear the choir sing Joy to the World, will I breathe a little faster at the renewed realization that the Lord has really come?  When I give a gift to someone, wrapped as beautifully as I can manage it, will I know in the depths of my being that the greatest gift of all was the one God gave to me, wrapped in the form of a tiny infant? When I fix our annual gifts for the needy, will I be aware of what that tiny baby later told me that whatever I do for someone else, I do for Him?

Father, forgive me for overlooking what you have wanted me to hear in this verse for so long, looking at it only as something nice in the Christmas story. Forgive me for not seeing that you want something in me, my own spirit, to leap for joy at the sound of the good news of Jesus’ birth. Amen

And Then It Was Christmas: A Journey Toward Christmas
prepared for Homosassa United Methodist Church, 2006,
by Patience Nave, Christian Education Coordinator.