STAR TIME

Every year, when we put the nativity scene on the fireplace mantel, we hang a star above it on the wall.  This year, I had to move the clock from that location before I could hang the star.  I probably look at that clock a hundred times a day.  What time is it?  Is it time for the older kids to catch the school bus?  Is it time to take the youngest one to school?  How much time do I have to get something done?  Should the children be home soon?  Is it time to get the youngest?  What about those after-school activities?  Is it time to go?  How much time before my husband gets home?  Is it time to start dinner?  Go to sports practice?  Send the kids to bed?  Fall into bed myself?  What time is it? 

The first few days after I moved the clock, I instinctively looked to the usual place on the wall, only to find not a clock, but a star.  I was frustrated at first.  After all, what I really wanted to know was what time it was, not the location of an unusually placed star.  Then I slowly began to see an Advent message in the situation.  Two thousand years ago, God used a star to tell the world what time it is.  It is the time for hope.  It is the time for a new relationship with God, no longer barred by unforgiven sin.  It is the time for Christ, our Savior, who will someday come again!  That is what time it is. 

-- Anne Inkster Culver 

#5746

THE BRIGHT AND MORNING STAR

“I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you these things in the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the Bright and Morning Star.”  (Revelation 22:16 NKJV)

O Christ the Bright and Morning Star:  grace the horizon of our world with promise of a new and holier day; that all the peoples of the earth may take fresh courage, and that the terrors of darkness may be put to flight.

-- John Underwood Stephens


#3990

A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

"What has come into being in Him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it." (John 1:3b-5 NRSV)

What might happen to us and within us and among us if we were indeed to prepare our hearts and follow the star...?

We might begin to believe that the Light will indeed shine in the darkness and that the darkness will never overcome it. We might begin to know in our hearts that no darkness that we find ourselves in is too dark for us after all, that the One who made us will come searching for us again and again, choosing to come and be among us, choosing to share in that darkness and to burst it apart with light and life and hope.

-- Robert Benson in The Night of the Child (Nashville, Tenn.: Upper Room Books, 2001)

#3787