The best part about Christmas is where it leads.
If Christmas was just one day with camels and sheep and donkeys and a stable and angels and Mary and Joseph and God’s only son born in a manger then it’s still a pretty great day. But it doesn’t end there.
It’s an entire story.
And Christmas is not even the beginning of the story. It’s actually the beginning of the middle. It’s a long, long story from our perspective. So long, in fact, that it’s hard to imagine. But let’s try.
Pretend that time is a book you can hold in your hand. The first page is the beginning of everything. The last page is the end. You can flip through the entire thing. That is the Christmas story.
Here’s another way to picture it . . .
Chris Harrison’s visualization of Bible cross references showing interconnection.
This is is a visualization of a database of 63,779 textual cross references in the Bible. It was created by Chris Harrison of Carnegie Mellon University and Christoph Römhild, a Lutheran pastor. It begins with Genesis and ends with Revelation. Each arc is a connection between verses of the Bible, written years, decades, centuries and even millenia apart by different authors in multiple languages. Click the picture for a full screen view. (More detailed info HERE)
Their point is to show the interconnectedness of the Bible. Another word you might use is consistency.
My point is this, it’s more than a collection of short stories. It’s all one big story, and Christmas is just a part of it. To celebrate Christmas alone would be missing the point.
Merry Christmas everyone.
I was thinking about something along these lines yesterday but on a different plane (you know me). I’m pretty sure I’m not the first. But I was humming “Mary Did You Know” and I started visualizing Mary, from her eyes, how her journey must have looked the week before she gave birth to Jesus. Ironically maybe the most insignificantly physically event, that bore the most significant Spiritual event since the Garden of Eden – a woman, on a lone animal, with Joseph, traveling. Was she uncomfortable and scared being it was her first child, or were Angels comforting her? Did she look at the stars and see up differently? I’m sure this has been discussed before. But for some reason yesterday, I got the sense her journey was a quiet, solitary one. Not sad, but one with deep thought and reflection of the prior unfolding revelations of what was about to happen. All amid the 63,779 data points to which she was unaware.
That picture I must say Dennis, is the most beautiful database I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen thousands of them.
Merry Christmas!!
It really struck me. As far as what Mary was thinking, I’ll leave that to you and Suzie. Experience has taught me to keep quiet around very pregnant women. 🙂 But if Joseph was anything like me before the birth of his first child, he was useless.
Joseph stood by her, when no one else would, given the time and culture who frowned on her “situation”. They were a couple who were about to share a most unique experience – the one I think Adam and Eve were meant to share in some respects, but botched and then subsequently cursed…wow that’s another discussion.
Anyway. She was in great need of Joseph. And I bet Suzie would agree with me, that she can’t imagine having your children without your support, love, ice chip runs, Lamaze counting, pillow fluffing PhD, 3am food runs, but most of all, you being you. Then again, there may be no real one attribute. I know Tom is all I want. Ask me any day, and I will give you different answers.
But because two people – Joseph and Mary – together believed in their God, look what happened? I will agree to disagree with you 🙂