Remember as a child when you played hide and seek? Remember how you would cover your eyes and count? Then you would speak those immortal words: "Ready or not, here I come." Do you get the feeling this time of year that you can hear the voice of Christmas like Marley's ghost saying to us, "Ready or not, here I come."
The next few weeks will be filled with so much activity, all the parties, the shopping, the visits to Santa. I like the story about the grandmother who took little Anne along on a shopping trip. After watching her grandmother choose and buy gifts all morning, Anne was taken to her promised visit to Santa Claus. She made her requests politely, and as she started to leave, the jolly gentleman handed her a large candy cane.
"What do you say?" prompted the grandmother.
Little Ann furrowed her brows in thought, then smiled and brightly announced, "Charge it."
Women are probably more conscious of the nearness of Christmas than men. Someone has defined a man as a creature who buys football tickets three months in advance, but waits until Christmas Eve to do his Christmas shopping. Ready or not, says Christmas, here I come. Yes, Christmas demands preparation. That's as it should be. After all, the first Christmas demanded thousands of years of preparation.
At the 250th anniversary of the founding of Harvard University, the students marched in a torchlight procession. The most memorable group was the Freshman Class, one month old, which emerged with a gigantic banner reading, "The University Has Been Waiting 250 Years for Us."
The New Testament presents Jesus Christ and exclaims that all the ages have been waiting for His arrival, that all history has been preparing for His coming. "The birth of Jesus is the sunrise of the Bible," says Dr. Henry Van Dyke. "Towards this point the aspirations of the prophets and the poems of the psalmists were directed, as the heads of flowers are turned toward the dawn. From this point a new day began to flow very silently over the world, a day of faith and freedom, a day of hope and love. When we remember the high meaning that has come into human life, and the clear light that has flooded softly down from the manger-cradle in Bethlehem of Judea, we do not wonder that mankind has learned to reckon history from the birthday of Jesus, and to date all events by the years before or after the Nativity of Christ." (1)
One Gospel tells us that Christ came in the "fullness of time." What does it mean, the fullness of time?
RELIGIOUSLY, IT WAS THE FULLNESS OF TIME BECAUSE JUDAISM HAD FIRMLY ESTABLISHED THE PRINCIPLE OF MONOTHEISM.
Culturally, Alexander the Great had spread the Greek language over most of the civilized world three centuries earlier. It was then established as the international language by which the gospel could be communicated. Governmentally, the Romans furnished a system of law which made it possible for the gospel to grow in relative stability. Logistically, the system of Roman roads made travel by missionaries very possible. (2)
Do you suppose that as Alexander was extending his empire, he had any idea that God was using him to prepare the way for the babe of Bethlehem? Do you suppose that as Julius Caesar built the roads that made commerce possible over all the known world, that he was preparing the way for the King of Kings? When Augustus Caesar sent out his decree that all the world should be taxed and that every person should be enrolled in his own cities, do you suppose that he had any idea that he was engaged in bringing to pass an ancient prophecy that the Messiah should be born in Bethlehem?
By the time John cried out in the wilderness his prophetic, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight," God had already been at work for thousands of years bringing about just the right conditions for the birth of his Son. Then in the fullness of time, Christ was born.
But there is another dimension to this idea of preparing the way for his coming. CHRISTIANS STILL PREPARE FOR HIS COMING. As Richard E. Lofgren has written: "In Advent we prepared for the celebration of God's coming to us in the past in the holy child of Bethlehem. He has come! In Advent we anticipate the coming of a conquering Christ in the future. He will come! But in Advent we give attention to a God who comes to us and our world in the present. He comes! He comes to us every day in the scriptures but also in all kinds of ways. `How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given.' Or as another hymn writer says, `He speaks to me everywhere.' He comes to the world through ordinary people like you and me and in ordinary ways. Luther said, `Let no one give up the faith that God wants to do a deed through him.' God did a deed through a human being like us “Mary from Nazareth. He will do a deed through you and me “a Lucy or George or Becki or Eric “an ordinary or extraordinary person like us who lives in the present. If we are available to him, he will `be born in us today.'"
That is what we are preparing for “his birth within us. Martin Luther said that we are to be Christ to our neighbors. That is the best way in the world to prepare for Christmas. Be Christ to a neighbor.
Enter into somebody's loneliness. William Saroyan has a delightful story that he tells of the poor, little orphan boy standing amidst a long line of men and women queued up in the front of a movie house. A friend passed and asked: "Why are you standing here? You haven't got the fifty cents admission charge."
"I'm not going to the movies," the boy replied.
"Then why are you standing in line?" asked the friend.
"I'm standing in line," answered the boy, "because I'm lonely, and I like people." Christ came into this lonely world as a friend as well as a Savior. Why can't you and I enter someone's loneliness this Christmas.
Henry Van Dyke once asked: "Are you willing to stoop down and consider the needs and desires of little children; To remember the weakness, the loneliness of people growing old; To stop asking yourself whether your friends love you, but whether you love them enough; To bear in mind the things that other people have to bear in their hearts; To try to understand what those who live in the same house with you really want, without waiting for them to tell you? Then you can keep Christmas, And if you can keep it for a day, why not always?"
Psychologists have attempted to divide people into various categories. Ella Wheeler Wilcox has also made an observation, and this is what she has to say:
"There are two kinds of people on earth today,
Just two kinds of people, no more, I say.
Not the good and the bad, for 'tis well understood
That the good are half-bad and the bad half-good
No! the two kinds of people on earth I mean
Are the people who lift and the people who lean."
Are you one who lifts or one who leans? Evelyn Underhill once wrote: "The saints do not stand aside wrapped in delightful prayers, and feeling pure and agreeable to God. They go right down into the mess; and there, right down in the mess, they are able to radiate God because they possess Him . . . "
Prepare ye the way of the Lord . . . .In the hurry and scurry of this Christmas season, remember that the best gift that you can give to anyone is the gift God gives to everyone “Himself. Give yourself. If there is someone you can lift this Christmas, then be there. If there is a kind word or a friendly gesture, do not hold it back. Enter into someone's loneliness. Understand that the most prized gifts cannot be bought in a department store.
John Nesbitt tells the story of Barnaby, a wandering juggler in medieval Europe, who went from town to town putting on shows. The coins which people tossed on the cloth where he did his entertaining were the source of his livelihood.
One cold evening Barnaby was trudging along the road with not a cent in his pocket. He was hungry and chilled to the bone. A friendly monk came riding by on a donkey. He offered the freezing and hungry juggler a ride. He was taken to the nearby monastery. Barnaby enjoyed the fellowship of the friendly monks at the table and asked if he might remain and work for them. He was given a job washing pots and pans in the kitchen.
As the days followed, with Christmas approaching, the talk of the monks concerned the gifts they were preparing to give to the Virgin Mary for Christmas. Each one seemed to be vying with the other to give the best gift and lay it on the altar before the statute of Our Lady in the Chapel. One was translating a book, another painting a picture, and a third weaving a tapestry. According to tradition the best gift received the blessing of Mary.
When Christmas came, Barnaby was desperate because he could give no suitable gift to the Lady. He happened to think of the cloth and juggling equipment which he had hidden under the cot in his cell. He had not used them, nor mentioned this ability since he had come to the monastery. Impulsively, he went to his cell, got his equipment and stole into the chapel. There he spread out the cloth before the altar and proceeded to do his tricks before the Statue of Our Lady.
The abbot happened by, and looking in, was horrified at this apparent sacrilege. Here was the scullery boy desecrating the chapel by performing cheap tricks. But, as the abbot hastened down the aisle to reprimand the culprit, he stopped suddenly. For, the Statue seemed to come alive and bend over and place her hand on Barnaby's head in blessing. His had been the best gift given that year. In the words of Jesus, "He had done what he could do." That is all Christ expects of any of us.
Ready or not, here I come. Are you preparing the way for His coming? Are you doing the best you can with what you have?
1. William P. Barker, AS MATTHEW SAW THE MASTER (Westwood, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1964).
2. Ernest White.