.With Great Expectation.

My heart can empathize with Mary as she was filled with great expectation and anticipation to finally meet and hold her Son. And yet I comprehend not at all the hugeness of her emotions, as she clearly knew she was expecting God wrapped up in wrinkly baby skin and downy hair. Deity masked in the frailest, most helpless form of humanity. What must it have been like to carry deity inside of her body? Yet, that is what we as believers carry now. Is it not? Her bosom full with God, full with great expectation.

Our hearts full with God, full with great expectation.

May this Christmas find me breathless, not at the glimmering, brightly colored packages, but at the rustic, harsh, cold feeding trough that held a tiny, helpless looking, baby boy. May my eyes well with tears at the remembrance of the excrutiating cost my Jesus suffered in relinquishing equality with His heavenly Father in order to rescue me from death. May my heart beat surer and faster as my focus is riveted and caught between the manger bed and the wooden cross, and as they settle on eternity.

And may I never forget that the real bow that ties all of Christmas neatly, but oh so painfully, together is Grace. Grace wrapped up in a baby in Bethlehem, grace wrapped up on a cross on a hill in Jerusalem, grace wrapped up in the empty grave, and grace extended to you, to me, to all who will just believe.