No day of the year requires more preparation than Christmas.  The demands of the season have become increasingly prodigious.  We must find just the right gift for all our friends and relations, synchronize calendars so that all events can be attended, and devise elaborate culinary plans for nearly six weeks of feasting.   And then there is the decorating which gets earlier and earlier every year as it gets more and more sensational. 

The first mile marker on the road to Christmas for our family is the baking of the Christmas Cake.  Inspired by an episode of All Creatures Great and Small, Isabella bakes the cake in mid-October then methodically “feeds” it for the next two months.   There is no rushing the Christmas Cake.  Some things cannot be hurried.  The preparation must be slow and intentional.  Every step is important.  No shortcuts are possible.  And at last, after months of waiting, the day arrives just before Christmas when the cake can be iced and enjoyed with great fanfare.

I suppose it makes sense that our Christmas preparations are slow and methodical, unfolding step by step.   Since the great event our celebration signifies, the incarnation of Jesus Christ, was also slow and methodical, revealed step by step in the history of God’s redeeming work among men.   The Bible puts it this way.

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

Galatians 4:4-6.

God took His time.  He worked in the fullness of time.  He could have done things differently, but He sovereignly chose an unhurried pace to prepare men for His work of reconciling them to Himself.   From generation to generation, He raised up men and women through whom He acted to remind us that God is not powerless or unconcerned to save us from ourselves and to prepare us to receive Him as our Savior and King.   But how careful have we been to prepare? 

Have we spent months preparing for Christmas, but have no time for Christ?  John the Baptist was the great preparer – the forerunner of Jesus.  His life’s work was to “make ready for the Lord a people prepared.”   At his birth, as friends and neighbors gathered to celebrate his parent’s joy, they speculated on what this baby would grow up to become.  

As his father’s unbelief gave way to faith, the Lord restored his speech and he uttered a long-delayed word of blessing.  But his blessing and thanksgiving were not about his baby boy, but the one his son would herald.   John’s whole life would singularly revolve around preparing himself and others for Jesus.  And Jesus would later declare that of all those born of women, John was the greatest.   Nowhere is John’s greatness seen more brilliantly than in the following exchange in John 3.

And they came to John and said to him, Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness—look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him.” John answered, “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’ The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease. 

John 3:26-30

Can you say that?  Are you content to decrease, that Jesus may increase?  Does your life revolve around preparing yourself and others to love, serve and follow Jesus?   How do we avoid having Christ crowded out of our lives, how do we heed the thoughts of the line in Joy to the World, “let every heart prepare him room.”

In Luke 1:57-80 we are told of the birth of John the Baptist and his father’s prophetic song.  And in this benediction song, God teaches us to make preparation for Christ in our own lives and in the lives of others.   Join us as we examine the birth of John the Baptist in Luke 1:57-80 and our calling to prepare ourselves and others for Christ.  We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.