The way I see It

After 23 years of reading, acting out, singing about, and watching in Peanuts form "The Christmas Story" it can become just another ornament that gets hung up durring this holiday season. This year this season comes upon me at a time when I am in pursuit of knowing Christ more intimately, so in hopes of avoiding missing "the true meaning of Christmas" I started praying for God to show me something new in the story of Jesus' birth this year...

In evangelism, church planting, and missions classes we've talked a lot about contextualizing; getting to know the people, what they're in to, how they communicate with eachother, what it is that really gets their attention, and then bringing Christianity to them in a way that will really "click." This weekend I figured out that God truely sets the example of that whole concept for us as he worked it out perfectly at his son's birth...

So this is the new thing God showed me this year: God was coming to the Earth in human flesh and he needed to get the word out. So He went to the common everyday blue collar workers out in the feild and put on a show. After spending their entire lives growing up with shepards and learning the ways of watching out for sheep their intellectual level probably wasn't extremely deep. Knowing this God sent down lights and angels and loud voices and put on a show to get their attention, tell them what's up and how they can find his son. That night they saw Jesus face to face and were forever changed.

He also wanted to get the attention of the well-to-do wisemen in the surrounding lands. Knowing that they trusted things that they could spend time investigating and having something to explore and work through would make it really meaningful for them all he sent them was a new star in the sky. Seeing as how they spent their lives studying the skies God knew they would discover this new star and start searching for answers. In the end their journey of collecting stories from the common people, following and new star, and speaking with a king also lead them to an encounter with Jesus.

If all God had done was put a star in the sky a bunch of shepards would have totally missed it because they were too busy beating of animals who were trying to eat their sheep. And if all he sent was a show of angels the wisemen would have missed out on a journey that drew them into a relationship with Christ. Just like Paul said he wanted to "become all things to all men" (1 Cor 9:22-23) I hope to learn how to share Jesus in an effective way that my "people group" gets it, is excited about it, and is drawn deeper into it.