Is this the One?

How many days until Christmas?  I hear that a lot right now. This year I think Mindy and I are beginning to know what it will feel like for us at Christmas time for the next 10+ years. The questions come at us like cars passing on the highway. One after another, question after question. How many days until Christmas? Does that count today? How many days until we are off of school? How many days are we going to be at Grandma’s house? With each Christmas event we attend leading up to Christmas, we get asked, “Is this the day?” It can be daunting and challenging to field all those questions. I am supposed to be more joyful this time of year, and yet I feel more stressed having to answer so many questions. I find myself in prayer at night asking God for the patience to respond to their questions, and to prepare them for the season. A tiny part of me just expects them to know.

During Advent we spend time preparing for Jesus to come. That is why we have extra services and talk about the preparation involved with the coming of our Savior. The people of God in the Old Testament had been doing this for hundreds of years. We cram it all into four weeks! We touch on a few actual events leading up to Jesus’ birth that deal with Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and John the Baptist, and then hit a few other things like in our reading for this week.

Luke 7:18-35 (our reading this week) shows Jesus already as an adult, and John the Baptist sending two of his followers to question Jesus to see if He is the one they have been waiting for. Wait – Jesus as an adult? Aren’t we just preparing for His birth?  Yes.  This week of preparation is about John the Baptist making the connection for himself and his disciples, and many others, that Jesus is the Savior of the world. During the years of waiting, I am sure that there were a lot of questions, similar to my kids as they wait for Christmas day. The difference is that they weren’t worried about presents under the tree, but rather about the fulfillment of the prophecy. Yet their expectations were just as grand.  They caught glimpses of Christmas, like being freed from captivity and judges being sent to rescue them, but were still waiting for the real thing. All these false alarms created a lack of patience among the Old Testament people. However, what they saw as false alarms, were actually pointed plans of God.

This week may seem odd to jump to an older Jesus, but there is a great connection in how they had to process that the Savior was finally here. There is much debate on why John the Baptist, who was the one who prepared the way for Jesus, was asking these questions, but we will get into that this weekend. For now, it leaves us to ponder what questions we would have had trying to understand if Jesus was truly the Savior? How would we have asked those questions?  How would God have responded? What questions do we have this year of God’s fulfillment to save and rescue us? What areas do we need the presence of Jesus more than ever?