The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Welcome to the week to stop time and revel in the Savior’s work. The most wonderful time of the year.  All around the world, marketing companies and consumer product businesses are working their hardest to convince us that the birth of the Savior is best expressed by pink plastic doll houses, the latest Madden game, and designer basketball shoes. No, the best way to express the birth of the Savior is in one sentence:

But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.

The fullness of the time: the appropriate time, the appointed time, the designated time. Eternity spun into days, months, hours, years. Logos descending into Time.

Everyone is quick with their take on what the “true” meaning of Christmas is (take your pick):

• time spent with family
• time spent with friends
• caring for the needy
• forgiving others
• exchanging selfish habits for generosity toward others
• peace in war zones
• giving yourself to others
• good triumphing over impossible odds

All well and good, but they are viable choices ONLY because they mimic God’s actions on behalf of His created persons. God’s unfathomable love for His humans willed Him to set in motion the only set of circumstances that could align two mutually exclusive realities: every one of His created persons could not be His because of sin and He cannot in violate His holy, righteous self with sin.

Every delightful family tradition, every tearful reunion and sad good-bye, every gift, even all the failed expectations of what the “holiday” will do, comes from the truth that Christ did enter earth as the God-Man, not for the purpose of a sappy story, but to do battle with evil. My evil. His Victory. My Redemption.

All in time, and on time. The Perfect One’s appointment with fallen time. I know, I know. Cookies still need made, and (in our house) the brunch that will start days of familyness needs prepared NOW. Presents need wrapped.

But more than any of that, our minds and spirits should daily confront the grand thoughts of Christ leaving Heaven’s glory in the form of a servant, Logos as second Adam, Eternal King as Little Babe. So for the next  few days, I offer worthy texts as food for thought in the season of feasting.

To start the thinking feast, a different slant on Galatians 4: 1-7, courtesy of Bible.cc, and their the Orthodox Jewish Bible translation:

1. Now I say this: for however much time as the yoresh (heir) has not attained his majority (the state or time of being of full legal age, or his religious majority, his Bar Mitzvah), he differs nothing from an eved, though being Ba’al Bayit of all the nachalah (inheritance).  2. And he is under shomrim(guardians) and omnot (governesses) until the time previously appointed by the Ba’al Bayit. 3. So also we, when we were immature, had been enslaved under the yesodot (rudiments) of the Olam Hazeh. 4. But when the fullness of time had come, Hashem sent forth his Ben HaElohim [Moshiach, 2Sm 7:14; Ps 2:7; 89:27f], born of an isha (Gn 3:15; Isa 7:14; Mic 5:2), born under the Torah, 5. That Moshiach might bring the Geulah (Redemption) to the ones under the Torah, that we might receive the Ma’amad HaBanim (the standing as sons), the bechirah adoption. 6. And because you are banim, Hashem sent forth the Ruach of His Ben HaElohim into your levavot, crying “Abba, Avinu!” 7. So you are no longer an eved but a ben; and if a ben, also a yoresh through Hashem.

And you thought you knew all about the true meaning of Christmas! Christmas is so big the Hallelujah Chorus will resound forever and every king who ever was will bow, not stand, to honor the King.