"...the time came for the baby to be born..." Luke 2:6
In the quiet moments after Jesus' birth, when his brow was gently kissed, his newborn body wrapped in cloths and laid in a manger, when relief that the birth was without complication and the pain was now over hovered in the air, and before the shepherds arrived with their excited clamor, no one really knew what had actually just occurred. In the moment of Jesus' birth time itself was branded by the Eternal. Time was split in two, forever and dramatically. Within a short period of time, this birth, on this night in Bethlehem, would forever be the central point of history, the demarkation, the dividing line between before and after. History, and time itself, would never be the same. He who is himself timeless, who separated light from darkness, established day & night, and through the sun, moon, and stars marked months, seasons days & years by the power of his word, entered into time unassumingly, and shattered any reference point to measuring time that had previously existed. He became the reference point. And he does the same in our lives when we surrender our moments and days to him.
It is easy for us to become lost in the mundane. Our days sometimes blend together in a gray sameness, and it becomes hard to distinguish one from another. We get caught in the grind of life and lose all sense of any meaning or greater purpose. Life takes sharp turns in directions that we never anticipated, and we lose perspective. In some ways this is why Advent is so compelling - the story itself and the season we celebrate. It is a story of the miraculous transforming the ordinary. It is a story of normal, everyday people whose lives collided with the eternal in ways they never could have imagined, and as a result were forever changed. It is a story that tells of Zechariah the priest, and Mary, a young virgin, and Joseph, a simple carpenter, each met by angels. It is the story of Elizabeth who became the talk of the town for conceiving in her old age after years and years of barrenness, and of her son John leaping in her womb at the sound of Mary's voice and the presence of his Savior growing within her. It is shepherds encountering the glory of God in the night sky and being the first to see the Savior of all mankind. It is a story about an old man, Simeon, and an old woman, Anna, who woke up on a day that seemed like any other, but wasn't, because they saw and held the Promised One. It is a story that tells of Wisemen coming from a distant land with lavish gifts to a small town because their lives were upended by a star in the sky that beckoned them to follow. It is a season of expectation, of waiting and fulfillment, of light dawning in darkness.
We who are bound by time and its demands, its limits and losses, the long shadows it casts on our lives need the Timeless One. We need the Eternal One to speak into our weary, time-worn hearts. We desperately need the One who created time, orders time, and subjected himself to time; we need him to enter into the events and circumstances of our lives in just as miraculous a way as he did when he entered into history as Mary's son born of the Spirit. We who were created with eternity in our hearts long for our temporal lives to be touched by the Eternal. We need Him who split history in two to awaken us to his presence, to split our lives open with "before and after" moments, to forever change our reference point from us to him, from fear to joy, from emptiness to purpose, from sorrow to hope, from darkness to light. Let's invite him who entered into time and forever changed history to transform our hearts and lives this Advent season.