November 15

Numbers 5:11-6:27, Luke 2:1-20, Proverbs 7:6-20

I felt a bit guilty today. Sometimes reading a passage out of context and out of season can make it seem like mere words. It was only after reading the story of the birth of Jesus that I realised I had treated it like any other passage. Some of the magic that is attached to the reading at Christmas didn’t seem to be there and that was more down to me rather than the fact that it is not Christmas.

What I missed though goes much deeper. The story of the birth of Jesus is not confined to Christmas, for starters I think we are quite confident that 25th December is not quite his actual Birthday. The birth of Christ is relevant and real 365 days a year. It is an event of complete magic whenever we experience it. Without his birth we could not have had his death and without his death we cannot have life.

I know the vastness, majesty and awesome power of God has been an on going theme, but the magic of Christ’s birth is that the fullness of God is brought to us in this baby. The blessing that God gives for Aaron to use tells us that the face of the Lord will be turned towards us and in the coming of Christ we see this happen. As we go through the Old Testament we are going to see a lot of prophecy’s that will point us to this one amazing event, an event we must not confine to just one season (and I speak as one guilty of that today).

I don’t want to let the proverbs reading slip by either today. This young lad is being tempted by sex, plain and simple. Male or female, it is a very real temptation today, but it also ranks alongside many other temptations, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs and so on the list can go. The Nazirites dedicated themselves to the Lord and yesterday we pondered that we too can dedicate ourselves to God to be his prophets. It is in the birth of Christ that we find the strength to overcome these temptations and dedicate ourselves to him.

We are all tempted from time to time, we just need to remember that we don’t have to wait to Christmas or Easter to find the answer. the events in Nazareth are ours to claim today. The blessing of the Lord is upon us.