The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told. Luke 2:20 NIV
After I retired from teaching, supervising, and administrating in the public schools, I began doing what I should have been doing all along. I began reading my Bible each day. I had never read the Bible all the way through until I took a 365-day Bible from my shelves and purposed to read it all the way through in 2004. They say that doing something for 21 straight days will form a habit, and it did form a habit, notably the best habit I have. As I read the Bible, I underlined passages that spoke to me in some way each day. By 2007, I almost had the whole Book of James underlined. In 2008, I began to add the date in the margin to whatever I underlined that day. Doing that would actually give me a mental nudge as to why it spoke to me the previous years.
I have given that introduction to explain the significance of the phrase which concludes Luke 2:20 – “which were just as they had been told.” In four years of reading Luke 2 in several different versions, I had never noticed nor underlined Luke 2:20. I had read through the Christmas story early in each year in the 365-day Bible, but that verse did not give me pause until last December when I was asked to read the Christmas story in Luke aloud to a group of women at a church Christmas party. I was using the hostess’s Bible, and it was an NIV, not a version I usually read. I asked how far she wanted me to read, and she said to stop wherever it seemed appropriate. I stopped after Luke 2:20, and I have pondered the closing phrase of that verse throughout this past year.
Angels appeared to the shepherds in their fields and announced the birth of God’s son, our Savior. The angels didn’t appear to the king. They didn’t go to the priests. They didn’t go to the Roman soldiers. They didn’t go to the tax collectors. They appeared to the lowly shepherds. And when the shepherds went to see the baby in the manger, they returned to their fields and their herds, praising and glorifying God because everything the angels had told them was just as they had been told.
I pondered how it wasn’t only what the shepherds were told that was just as it had been told. What Mary was told about giving birth to the Savior came to pass. What Joseph had been told about his fiancée Mary came to pass. What Elizabeth realized when her baby (John the Baptist) leaped in her womb upon seeing the pregnant Mary had come to pass. But, it reaches far beyond that. What Adam and Eve were told about the heel of man wounding the serpent was to come to pass. What Isaiah prophesied about a man of sorrows would come to pass. And, as the prophet Micah proclaimed in Micah 5:2 “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times” would come to pass. Everything that we have been told has come to pass or will come to pass because God is not a man that He should lie.
Today, Christians rejoice at the birth of Christ, our savior, but not many of the Jews beyond the shepherds who came to worship Him at birth were thrilled at His appearance. You see, the Jewish nation was looking for a Jewish king to rule them, a messiah who would save them from Roman oppression just as Moses had delivered their forefathers from Egyptian slavery, a mighty warrior who would conquer the circumstances for them. They needed a bailout of sorts. The baby in the manger was not what they expected. The 12 year old in the temple was not what they expected. The 20-something carpenter was not what they expected. The 30-year-old water-to-winemaker was not what they expected. The healer of men and feeder of thousands was not what they expected. So, He did what was expected of Him by the Father, He died for the sins of His people — our own individualized, personalized bailout. Not a king on earth, but the Prince of Peace from Heaven came just for us just as we had been told.
I cannot celebrate Jesus,
our Lord in the cradle,
without also celebrating Jesus,
our Lord on the cross,
and Jesus,
our Lord in the dark tomb,
and Jesus,
Our Risen Savior!
Merry Christmas to all my family–
those in the blood,
and those under the blood!
Bettye Bunch
December 24, 2009
