God's Prep Work

Our Christmas cards went in the mail today.

In this house, that's a miracle for two reasons. First, we actually sent Christmas cards this year. Second, they went out before Christmas.

I must admit that Christmas usually sneaks up on me and I don't get a chance to enter into the wonder of it all because I'm too busy ridding myself of the guilt I feel over not making sugar cookies and forgetting to buy the mailman a gift...again. But this year, I'm on the ball! Preparations are coming along and there's a plan in place.

And yet, as I reflect on the Christmas story I can't help but contrast that with Mary's experience of actually birthing Christ into this world. She has no place to "nest," no baby showers to ensure that she has all the right gear babies are supposed to have, no cute baby boy nursery in eggshell blue. Instead she travels eighty miles on the back of a donkey with a new husband. What must it have been like to give birth for the first time in a barn with a carpenter as a midwife. She knows no one around. There's no phone call to mom to celebrate this extraordinary moment. No friends dropping by to hold the baby only a bunch of stinky low class shepherds she's never seen before!

I have to wonder if Mary questioned God's plan in this? Did she wonder if God had abandoned her? Or did she rest in His sovereignty, His authorship of the redemption story? Did she see His hand despite her lack of preparation?

It's a strong reminder God is writing His story and I'm not. I'm not always going to be prepared for the direction that story takes. This is no excuse for laziness, for not planning at all, but instead an encouragement to have an open handedness that puts my plans into His sovereign hands.

Those same hands that about 30 years later were spread across rough hewn wood, driven through with nails so I would know that even the unexpected is bathed in His love. I wish that being in the center of His will was always going to be easy but that's not the picture that His story paints. Mary gives birth in an animal stall mostly alone and far from home. Christ dies on a cross, abandoned by his friends and heckled by his enemies. This is the story that gives us hope, the one that also contains a resurrection and a marriage feast.

So I make my Christmas plans and even if they go sideways and chaos ensues God can still show up. In fact, that may have been His plan all along.