Three Important Questions For Your Faith

Welcome back to Feed Your Soul. This Sunday's reading has one of my favorite lines in the whole Bible. It's a lesson for the ages, but I think it is a lesson, particularly for our age. But let's take a look at the whole reading. Sometimes the readings, they just start out of nowhere, and so it's important sometimes to go back and have a look at, okay, what is the context of this reading? This Sunday's reading begins, "And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the Babe lying in a manger." And of course, it raises the question, who went with haste. And so sometimes you have to go back a little bit. And of course, who it is is the shepherd. And the lines before that is, "And suddenly there was an angel. The multitude of heavenly hosts praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace among men with whom he is pleased." When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us." So that is the pretext to the Sunday's reading, which then begins, "And they went with all haste and found Mary and Joseph and a Babe lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying, which had been told them concerning this child by the angels. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart, and the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, and it had been told them. And at the end of the eight days when he was circumcised, He was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before He was conceived in the womb."

There's a lot of little things here that are not so little things. The first one is - and it's easy just to read over it or just to read through it - and they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph. How did they go? They went with haste. When did you last do that? When did you last go with haste searching for God's will? Or to execute, to do what you felt like God was calling you to? I think sometimes we can be quite lethargic when it comes to searching for God's will or doing God's will. We sort of can drag our feet, drag our hearts a little bit. How do the shepherds go with haste? There was like a sense of urgency. And so I think the question that is raised for us is when did you last have a sense of urgency about your spirituality? When did you last have a sense of urgency about doing what you felt like God was calling you to do? Because that sense of urgency is powerful. Next thing we see here is, "And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them." So the shepherds come, they tell the story of the angels, they say what the angels have said about this child. And the people there were in awe. They wondered in awe at what the shepherds were saying and asked the same question, when did you last wonder? When were you last in awe at the good news? Because this was the telling of the good news. The shepherds were saying saying this child is the good news. This child is the one promised by God. And again, I think sometimes we just read through the good news. We just take it for granted. But the people here, they're hearing it for the first time. They're in wonder, they're in awe. And so I think it's good for us to slow down sometimes and ask ourselves, okay, what is the good news? And when was the last time I really pondered it. I really was in wonder, in awe at the good news. And then here it is powerful. This is one of the great lessons we get from Mary. It is so, so very powerful. And again, it's just, it's hidden in there. Easy to read right through it. But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. What didn't she do? She didn't post on social, she wasn't posting on social. She wasn't telling the whole world. There is some things that are precious and that should be kept and should be pondered in our hearts. That shouldn't be told to the whole world. That shouldn't maybe be told to anybody. That maybe just between us and God and that He's given them to us to hold in our hearts.

And more than anything else, we need to learn that skill. It is a very, very uncommon skill in our culture today because what happens, people are posting about things before they even happen. And here she is. She has a child. She's pondering these things in her heart. She's present to the moment, she's present to the moment. And the problem with when we're telling the whole world about things we're not present to the moment, we're not. In this case, she would not be present to her child. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen and been told, praising God. And to ask the same question again. When did you last? When did you last actively, intentionally. Praise God. When did you last say God, you are awesome and thank you for all I have heard and seen and for all I've been told. When did you last praise God?

And then you have this last sentence in the reading, and it's like, it's sort of just like an aside. And at the end of the eight days when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. So what's happening here? Tying it all together. Tying it all together. And we see that over and over throughout the gospels, making connections to the past, making connections to the future, tying it all together, connecting the dots and encouraging us to connect the dots, not only in the scriptures, but in our own lives. And so here we are in five or six lines of scripture. You see all of these holy moments. You see all of these holy moments because the shepherds meeting Jesus is a holy moment. The shepherds meeting Joseph and Mary is in a holy moment. Mary pondering these things in her heart is a holy moment. The shepherd's praising God is a holy moment. And of course, the naming of Jesus is a holy moment. And so the dots that we're trying to connect are all of these holy moments. When did you last-- when did you last have a sense of urgency about God? What God was calling you to? When did you last ponder things in your heart really intentionally? When did you last praise God intentionally? Let's get out there this weekend and do all of these things. Little things that can make a huge difference.