God was so excited to share this news that the announcement came hundreds of years before Jesus was actually born. It was like a director of a big-budget film dropping a few spoilers before the release of the movie because he's so excited about showing it to people. God, knowing this was a story that would change all other stories, gave humanity something to look forward to before the big reveal (a kind of teaser trailer, delivered by Isaiah) because God knew how this story would change us.

Try

Be creative and write your own announcement of Jesus' birth. What would you emphasize, and how would you spread the word in today's world? ____________________________________________________________________________

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Waiting

I hate waiting. I've gotten better about it over time; but when I was a kid, I especially hated to wait at Christmas time. Starting on Thanksgiving Day, my thoughts were constantly about Christmas. I imagined the presents I would buy for family and friends. And, like most kids, I dreamed of the gifts under the tree that were marked with my name. In my house, we were not allowed to pick up gifts and shake them; and the rule was that if anyone found a hidden present in the house, it got returned. It only made the waiting harder. I remember one year begging my sister to give me a hint about what she had bought me. She refused, so I did what any nine-year-old would do. I threatened her.

"If you don't tell what you got me," I said, "I'll take back the gloves I bought you!"

Oops. I was so anxious to find out my own gift that I completely let it slip that I had bought her some (rather lame) gloves for Christmas. I eventually got better about giving and receiving gifts, but in that moment? Not so much.

I struggled with waiting because I was expectant in all the wrong ways. At Christmas I expected to receive something, or many somethings, that were awesome. In my mind Christmas was about me. Later in life I came to the discovery that Christmas isn't about unwrapping gifts, though it's a nice perk; Christmas is about unwrapping God. In doing so, we find that this baby is the full embodiment of a God who has been conversing with humanity for a long time.

I also came to discover that God is expectant in a different way. God is expectant ... of us. God expects us to respond to the magnificent gift we have been given at Christmas: Jesus.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given....

God had been waiting a long time for the right moment to step into our reality. Genesis 3 tells us a story about Adam, Eve, and the perfect Garden of Eden. In Eden, God regularly spent time with this first couple. Everything was the way God intended it, especially his relationship with Adam and Eve. But when they listened to the snake (symbolic of evil) and disobeyed God, sin entered the picture for the first time. From that moment God set a plan in motion to redeem and restore all of us back to a perfect relationship again. God had been waiting a long time for the right moment to step into our reality.

Sin is the perpetual state in which we live. It's like the moon. The moon wasn't always rotating around the earth. According to some theories, it was flying through space. As it crossed through our solar system, it was caught in earth's gravitational pull and will remain in orbit around the earth until some outside force acts upon it. (Pay attention in physics class!) In a similar way, humans were set on the path of sin, and we will remain there until some other force acts upon us.

When God punished the snake in Genesis 3:14-15, God predicted a redemptive force that would act upon us:

So the Lord God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,

"Cursed are you above all the livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel."

One of the "offspring" referred to here is actually Jesus. One might say that God is telling the snake, "You'll strike his heel, but my Son is going to destroy you in the end!" God has been waiting a long time to bring Jesus into the world and expects us to accept the gift of Jesus.

Why?

Because Jesus is the force that destroys our sin and restores our relationship with God again.

Consider

• In what ways are you expectant at Christmas? How might you be expectant in a different way this year?

• Why do you think God predicted the birth of Jesus over and over in the Old Testament?

• What does it tell you about God that the birth of Jesus was planned for so long?

• Why does God say to the snake it will "strike his heel"? Is there a plan for evil?

Role Reversal

God isn't just expectant of us but wants us to be expectant of Jesus.

There is no better illustration of this idea than in the life of Mary. We saw earlier that Mary was the one chosen for this grand story. She was informed of the plan by the...