Here we are in December. The season of waiting has come. Children are waiting for Santa. Christians are waiting for Christ. Someone is waiting for a soldier to come home. All of us are waiting for something.

Waiting is hard for me. I spent my days in the hospital reading the Pentateuch, the ceremonial laws of Leviticus, the census counts of Numbers, the speeches of Moses in Deuteronomy. Some of the most boring pages of the Bible you can find, but you do that when all you are doing is just waiting and passing time. Then I found myself fumbling through Matthew's genealogy of Jesus – the first seventeen verses of Matthew that few of us read on the way to the great story of Christmas. It's been said no one gets a second chance to make a first impression. Either Matthew didn't know about first…