In Both Seasons

Four centuries.

Four hundred years! That’s how much time passed between the last Old Testament prophet speaking in the Old Testament and the dawn of Christmas. The birth of Christ crashed into world history, launching what J.R.R. Tolkien described as a “eucatastrophe” (a good destruction) to launch God’s story in an entirely new direction.

For His own purposes, after Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi died, God chose to be silent to his beloved people, leaving them to remember only what He had already done and already said.

Then comes the book of Matthew, which begins by slowly and laboriously recounting the Messiah’s ancestors. Matthew then launches into a fast and furious explosion of events: Jesus’ miraculous conception, the supernatural events surrounding his birth (angels and stars!), and the glorious and fantastic prophecies surrounding his entry into the world. The entry of love is so good and so menacing to the forces of darkness that the forces of darkness unleash a pogrom to kill the young boy. The pogrom fails, the boy is safe and then…

Then the story takes a long pause. Between the last verse in Matthew chapter 2 and the first verse in chapter 3, nearly three decades pass before Matthew picks up the story again. This long-awaited Messiah has finally come, but all Matthew cares to tell us about his first thirty years is shockingly sparse: “He went and lived in a town called Nazareth.”

This narrative is both the Word and the way of God: long waiting, intense action, followed by long waiting. Decades (or even centuries) may come and go before anything seemingly significant takes place. The Gospels testify to a patient God who sometimes takes centuries to set up his move, and who then thinks nothing of sitting on it for another thirty years until everything is just right.

Is this not also true of God’s work in our lives? At times, God’s activity will seem intense and glorious. At other times, it may seem as if he is taking a nap. Waiting is, by God’s design, a significant part of the Christian life. Sometimes, we will feel as if we are in the center of God’s work; at other times, we may feel like all we are doing is living an anonymous life in a simple town.

In both seasons, however, we are still living the life of Christ.