Week 1 Christmas Challenge, Space for Awe.Sample

Even before the birth of Jesus there is a myriad of awe-filled happenings in the preparations. The elderly couple gets pregnant and a son is to be born filled with the Spirit from birth! And all of it is prophesied beforehand. And this John is to play a significant role in preparing people for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

This all sounds awesome, but our attention span—at least some of us—might be limited to 15 seconds (see Tik Tok!), not fifty years! This on-demand lifestyle we enjoy puts any item we desire at our fingertips with same-day delivery, explores every corner of the internet at the swipe of a finger, and accesses thousands of movies and tv shows whenever we choose. 

And God’s timing is not ours. A thousand years can be as a day, yes. But / AND, a day can be as a thousand years. And sometimes the space we want to create and inhabit for awe is not just physical or geographic, but it is also temporal. 

And, admittedly, there is kairos time (things coming to a head) and chronos time (minutes rounding the clock), and chronos is to serve kairos. But we might infer from the timeline of these prophecies in Luke 1 that you can’t always snap your fingers and experience the results you desire. It is a good reminder that God is God and we are not. 

The decades implied in these verses suggest long periods of obedience. They intimate seasons of intimacy that postured the participants to partner with God in the fulfilling of the prophecies. 

And we are subtly invited by this example to press in temporally—both daily and for the long haul—to Jesus in prayer (conversation, chats, listening, silence, etc.) and Bible (reading, meditating, studying, memorizing, assimilating, etc.) and community (hubs, encouragement, service, etc..).

We are to be awestruck by God. And we will be—in His good time.

The painting on Day 1, 'Making Room for Preparation' is from an upcoming book by Bette Dickinson called, Making Room in Advent: 25 Devotions for a Season of Wonder scheduled to be published by InterVarsity Press in Fall 2022. The book will include original paintings and devotional readings in Luke 1-2. For more information, go to www.bettedickinson.com