This, from our creche, not the card
This morning I received a mass e-mail from a church headquarters in England. It said in the interest of the environment they were blessing us this year with an electronic Christmas card. We were even reminded to consider the environment before printing the e-mail.
I wondered, “Why would I print the e-mail? Unless I wanted another iconic picture of Mary and Joseph and Jesus looking like idiots on drugs, eyes rolled to the sky, with an angel flying by looking about as spaced.
Sorry to offend anyone, but I’d like to make the point for history being flesh and blood, not sentimentality and child’s art.
Mary and Joseph were real people. They were likely good people, but not perfect people. Had God been waiting for perfect people, we’d still be waiting for Christmas.
At just the right time, when the exact number of generations had gone by in Jewish lineage, when world power was at its zenith, the unassuming, unpretentious, unknowing and non-competing Mary was selected as first and only, worldwide, “Miss Virgin.”
Not much is known about her before her now 20 centuries of fame . . . just that she was engaged to a carpenter, could ride a donkey and, as was pointed out later, in the lineage of King David.
Same with Joseph. He was a good man, of basic honest character, willing to divorce the woman he loved when she with child not his, willing to marry her anyway when enlightened that this was of God. (In those days an engagement was already a legal contract.) What he was likely naive to was that if the kingly line was still continuing in Israel, Joseph was in line for the throne.
And of course his first son would be king after him.
All this is hidden, and revealed, in the genealogies of Matthew and Luke. Worth a look.
The likely fact is, however, Mary and Joseph had little idea about all this and no idea what was happening to them.
Which, by the way, is about how it is with us. Only the future will reveal what was really going on, the significance of our times, and our possibly having been chosen for “something.”
Meantime, like Mary and Joseph, all we can do is play our parts as well as we can.
And hope some future artist doesn’t make us look half dazed.
(Then again, that might be accurate.)
Our Lives Together
Its About Life
10:00 am
Hyatt, Merry Christmas to you and family. These devotionals need to be in some kind of book form. They are wonderful.
10:35 am
Made me laugh…yes, those old painting do looked like they are on drugs.
I agree with the previous post about doing a devotional. It would have to include paintings too.
Have a blessed Christmas,
Pastor Adam Barton
Akron, Ohio
10:41 am
Hyatt, I have never thought that Joseph, Mary and Jesus all looked a little crazed in some of the renditions of them that are out there circulating but now that I think about it, European trips included, you are right! How funny!! They need you as their artist!! for sure!!! But to the more serious side of your blog writing, what really touched me was the magnificent faith that was seen in Mary and Joseph, not being able to see anything but trusting in everything!! And so many odds against them but that our Lord is greater in every way and over it all!!! What a lesson more powerful than any sermon. Wonderful and awesome to behold and to reflect on! Blessings! Lisa
11:32 am
I would probably not say “no idea,” afterall there was the annuciation and the visit with Elizabeth.
11:44 am
Roger, You’re absolutely right!
3:53 pm
Loving this Christmas series Hyatt – thanks! As Morgan, “the bright one”, started walking two days before his first birthday, and Taylor, joins us tomorrow for the holiday – our desire is to simply play our part well – thanks for the encouragement.
Wish you and Ann, and your family a great Christmas!
10:02 pm
So true, Hyatt, our images of the events surrounding the actual Nativity fall so short. If the New Earth has cinemas, perhaps we’ll all see a rerun of the birth of the Messiah as it actually was, and be astonished as to how it was all so down-to-Earth, literally. As Brennan Manning says, “Christmas is the promise that the God who came into history and comes to us daily in mystery will one day come in glory. God is saying, in Jesus, that in the end everything will be all right.” A Merry Christmas, filled with hope, to you and your family!
10:09 pm
That is one thing I can say “amen” to is the goofy pictures I see too often of the lowly parents of Jesus who were ordinary people doing ordinary things in an extraordinary way with extraordinary results. It boggles the mind when one really think about those events from Jesus’ conception to birth to death to resurrection. Amazing!!! Won’t it be wonderful to talk to those folks and get the whole story?
7:58 am
Hyatt, so true. I guess it was the style back then. Like our present day media, forming our opinion by their propaganda, so was the case of the artists back then. I am not sure if present day media words and moving images or the artists back then with the sculptures of paintings are more powerful.
I must agree that now in my middles ages looking back on my years, I truly see the Hand of God in my “insignificant” life that He sees as special.
Merry Christmas Hyatt:)
1:13 am
thanks Hyatt Merry Christmas.