Anticipation

It's a vacation day, yet I wriggle restlessly within my blanket. I aggressively close my eyes to demand some sort of rest. It doesn't come. I resign to my 'awakedness' and stumble into the kitchen to make coffee.

The sun has barely made an impact through the five windows encircling my living room, reminding me of and further frustrating my absence from my Christmas Adam lie-in. I sit in "my chair" and roll my eyes in amusement that I am twenty-seven years old and I have "a chair".

While holding my warm coffee cup adorned with my favorite North Texas skyline, I silently look at our Christmas tree. I scan the room taking in the sights of our Yuletide decor, but mostly I absorb the silence. I appreciate it and yet I am wistful for its consumption one day by the sounds of a growing family, a child or children to shatter the silence.

We've been blessed with one. Her life is growing away from us, as maturing, healthy lives should.

Now we wait for our next. This kind of waiting is foreign to me. How do you wait for a life? Never having conceived and nurtured for nine months, I don't know how this anticipation is supposed to work out. Does each day yield new certainties or simply breed further unknowns? We have presently not been allotted nine months of known preparation. Instead, we stare down the barrel of any day now.

How does one prepare? I suppose you don't. Diapers, a crib, formula, clothes, money... they will come in time, as needed ...I hope.

Love... we have lots of love... and anticipation... we've much anticipation. And trust? Well, we are working on that.

Anticipation is anxiety redeemed, so I embrace it as a gift.

This fluttering in my gut and thumping in my chest are rhythms of grace and redemption, the gorgeous prelude to one of the Composer's finest pieces... a Symphony of Anticipation, a life entrusted to us as its glorious crescendo.

His willingness and ability to redeem astounds me. My selfish, wretched heart, he is redeeming into that of a mother's. My "goodness" sits as filthy rages, but his blood has redeemed them into sweet fragments of sanctification. This silence in which I sit, to be redeemed into joyful noise, and then one day back into much needed silence. He's redeemed this restless morning into a time of worship. My habitual slavery to anxiety he redeems into sweet anticipation, a story this great Author has written before.

I sit in my chair with great anticipation for a child. Yes, the one my heart will love as if from my own flesh, but also for the child who humbled himself to earth. The one who stooped to the confines of time to redeem the broken. The child born to die. I long for him as so many did those thousands of years ago when God redeemed that silent night with celestial choruses and a screeching infant. How Mary must know of the redemptive beauty of anticipation. I sit and behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, born as a baby, ushered in with great anticipation and I eagerly wait.

Your Mama

Begats 

No one cares about your mama. I’m sure she’s a fine woman, but unless she’s "somebody", no one cares. Lineage has declined in status and necessity in the twenty-first century. Generations proceeding the Baby Boomers subscribe to the mantra of “making a name for oneself,” as opposed to the traditional pursuit of “upholding the family name”. Anyone can be anyone, in spite or despite one's upbringing or bringer-uppers , thus, making your mama (or daddy for that matter) not a number one topic of interest. 

As Matthew introduces his account of the Gospel, he delivers a long list of begats. Abraham begat  Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob, and so on. You know, it's the section of scripture no one volunteers to read in Sunday school, for fear of name pronunciation. This biblical list of baby names is much more than an introductory obligation or a prelude to the "real story". 

It is the real story. 

Matthew opens the door to show the reader this epic tale points towards Jesus, even long before his birth. He is the hinge. He is the crux. He is the climax. Every begat is intentional, meaningful, instrumental. It is all about Jesus. 

As I consider this lot, I am hopeful because of its content. It is a clinging post of hope for the lacking nature and high calling of my soul. The genealogy of Christ consists of ordinary, at times seemingly worthless, individuals summoned into the redemptive work of the creator. 

From Abraham, we see God's promise of ultimate reconciliation with his people through his own sons.  God beckons him to gaze upon the stars and attempt to number them because likewise in magnitude will be his offspring.  Yet, he does not wait on the Lord. Abraham takes matters into his own hands, impregnating one of his servants.  

And he is in the bloodline of Christ. 

In David, we see a man after God's own heart. A man with faith that slays giants. A man who is the rightful, appointed King of Israel. A man who sees a beautiful woman bathing on a roof and says "I want".  A man desperate to cover his transgression to the point of murder. A man who grieves deeply his sin. 

And he is in the bloodline of Christ. 

Rahab, a woman who exchanged sex for money. By faith, she risked her life to aide God's people. 

And she is in the bloodline of Christ. 

Our creator takes the broken, deprave creatures of this world and redeems them for his holy name. 

The beginning of Matthew proves this well.  May this genealogy ushers us into the season when we recall the birth of Christ, by which he again uses the unlikely to do the incredible.