Advent - the Gift DevotionalSample

“Is your focus right this Christmas?”

“If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.” (John 14:7)

When my wife Jo Beth was a sophomore, a concert pianist came to her college and performed for the student body. About midway through the concert, a friend named Rae Lynn leaned over and said, “Jo B., look at his face as he plays! It’s so filled with expression.” Jo Beth commented to her friend, “My eyesight’s so bad, I can hardly see his face, let alone any expression!” So Rae Lynn took off her glasses and handed them to Jo Beth. Jo Beth looked and said, “Oh, I can see better now!”

A lot of us see God unfocused, much the way Jo Beth saw the concert pianist before she had glasses. Is that the way you see the Almighty? God is often dehumanized, depersonalized, and viewed, as one philosopher said, as “an oblong blur.” When I say “God,” can you focus in? Can you really see? Is God focused for you?

Christmas is God focused! In the fullness of time, in perfect harmony with prophecy, God came down the stairs of heaven with a baby in His arms, and slipped into history. If we can see that God was focused in Bethlehem on that first Christmas, then we can hear, see, and know God.