All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”- which means, “God with us.” Matthew 1:22-23

Every year as a family we try to read through the Christmas story from beginning to end in the month of December. My intent is to take a little time here and there- after meals, before bedtime, once a week or so, to read a small portion of the Christmas story and reflect on it.  I kind of like the idea of saturating the whole month with the true meaning of Christmas to help combat the many distractions of the season.  I wish I could say that this system works, but some years we end up cramming the whole Christmas story into Christmas eve while the kids restlessly eye their unopened gifts under the tree.  (Sigh…)  Now that we have children in high school, middle school and elementary school it seems like we’re lucky to just eat a meal together as a family, let alone have a protracted time of family discussion.    

So we got started the other night and we began with fulfilled prophecy.  The Christmas story doesn’t begin in 0 AD with the birth of Christ, it actually begins 400, 700 or several thousand years earlier when sacred scriptures in the Old Testament predicted that Jesus would come!  The New Testament writers often draw our attention to this by making explicit reference to the earlier writings.  The gospel of Matthew, in particular, frequently notes fulfilled scripture because the book was written to a Jewish audience that would already be familiar with the ancient texts. The gospel writers are careful to challenge both Jewish and non-Jewish readers that the coming of Jesus was in fact the culmination of God’s redemptive plan, not only for Israel, but for all of humanity.

It strengthens my faith to consider that so many specific details of Jesus’ birth and life were settled in the mind of God and recorded in the Bible hundreds of years before they actually happened.  It gives me confidence in the reliability of God’s word and a certainty that God is equally engaged and active in my life today.  

To be honest, there are plenty of things about the Christmas story that make little sense to me- God arriving in the belly of an unmarried pregnant teenager? A baby born outdoors and placed in a feeding trough? The slaying of the innocent children of Bethlehem?  Really?  REALLY? After a thousand years of planning it seems to me things could have come together in a slightly better way…

Come to think of it, there are a couple of things about my own journey that I don’t understand either. How about you? 

But through this humble, unexpected, imperfect and yet magnificent story, God reminds and reassures us that our story (and all all of history for that matter) is really not about us at all.  It’s about Him.  And we can rest in the knowledge that God is working out his perfection through our imperfection, creating a masterpiece in spite of our mess and establishing his kingdom in the midst of life’s chaos. In fact, the very things that surprise and disappoint us the most may just be the tool God uses to accomplish his eternal will.  Just as surely as Jesus’ birth fulfilled ancient scripture, my life is unfolding within the mind of God to a certain and ultimately beautiful outcome.