A Break in the Action

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wo weeks ago today was Christmas day.  How is that an eternity has come and gone since kids, yes even grown up kids, everywhere were tearing into packages, squealing with delight, creating both havoc and joy as they danced around living rooms, making sure there were no more “hidden” surprises anywhere?  Families piled into cars, trucks, SUVs, you name it, on their way to grandma’s house or to visit other family members to start the whole process all over again!

I spent the Christmas holiday with my family in North Carolina and took a break from work and, as you are aware, from sending the daily Tidbits.  Mom and I spent several days last week dismantling decorations, taking down wreaths, untangling the endless drop cords that powered the outside lights, and put all these in storage for safe keeping until next year.  We returned all the furniture to its place and rehung all the pictures. When I left, with the exception of a few things in my sister’s room, the house had returned to normal.  There was, to put it mildly, a break in the action.

The same must have been true for Mary and Joseph.  The long road to Bethlehem was behind them, the shepherds had come and gone and were back to tending their flocks as they had always done.  The angel’s announcement that Mary would have a son was a good but distant memory and life had settled down to its normal pace with errands to run, work to do, and a child to be cared for.

But if life had returned to normal for the shepherds and for Mary and Joseph, it was anything but normal for three companions who were making their way to see the one born “King of the Jews.”  We meet the Magi, or wise men, in Matthew 2:1-2, “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

There are few things we need to glean from this very familiar passage of scripture. In our Christmas stories, we erroneously have the wise men arriving at the stable on the night Jesus was born.  But the first 8 words of this passage clearly demonstrate that Jesus’ birth preceded the coming of the wise men.  Indeed, although life seemed to have returned to its ebb and flow for everyone else, God was working, calling three men to uproot themselves and follow a star to proclaim the news that the Messiah had been born.

Their arrival came two years after the birth of Jesus.  What seemed to be a break in the action, in the excitement surrounding the birth of Christ, was in fact no break at all.  God was working in the lives of these men, bringing them far from home and family to worship Christ.

As we enter a new year, what may seem to be break in the action may well be God’s timing to bring situations, opportunities, and people into our lives for the sole purpose of revealing himself in ways we can’t imagine.  God is working—always!  He wastes no time, no situation, and no circumstances but uses all of them to mold us and make us into the likeness of Christ.  A break in the action?  I don’t think so!