Making Jesus Famous

The Christmas story is so mundane to me. I wish it weren't, but it is. I have memorized the entire Christmas story, and it is read several times at Christmastime, which seems to come quicker every year.

The thing that struck me most about Luke 2 is Simeon. I can imagine the joy grandparents feel at seeing their grandchildren born. Imagine hoping to be able to see that before you die. But imagine that God had promised you that you would see the Messiah in flesh. Imagine that God had told you the salvation of your country was coming and you would witness it first-hand.

Each person in Luke 2 played a "role" in promoting Jesus. The angels proclaimed his birth from the heavens! The shepherds clamored to worship him. Simeon sang a song at the temple. And Anna had just been praying that He would come.

What's my role in promoting Jesus? What am I doing to make him famous? I don't have to be a missionary. I don't have to be preaching Jesus from the rooftops. But I should be promoting him in my own life. Pretty sure Simeon didn't keep his news to himself. Pretty sure he went back and boasted to all his buddies at the barber shop that he'd seen the Christ, that God had allowed him to live long enough to see the Messiah.

Forever Changed

Every Christian can (and should) boast intimate encounters with God. I can imagine the feeling that Elisabeth and Zechariah had when their barren years were over. But I cannot imagine knowing that the son they had dreamed of and hoped for was the forerunner of the Messiah. And one can hardly be expected to know what it was like to have the Messiah, the Christ, living and growing in human form, right inside your very own body.

I have never been pregnant and may never be, but the feeling of new life inside you must be indescribable. Imagine if that were the Son of God.

But I do have that feeling. I do know what it's like to have a living Being inside me. How easily I dismiss this fact. How easily I choose to ignore the fact that I do have the Holy Spirit inside me. I want to live in that feeling, in that knowledge that what I have is something special. Something like a secret especially for me.

Prayerless

I find it hard to read passages about God's answering prayer because I hardly ever pray. Very rarely. I do not struggle with reading my Bible. I don't struggle with listening to God; only talking. This (problem?) is very out of character with my personality. I don't struggle with finding things to say with friends or strangers. I don't struggle to keep a conversation going or to even make small talk.

Maybe I know that I can't make small talk with God. Maybe being in his presence just makes me realize how many of my words are unnecessary.

I've even tried writing down my prayers. They just turn into beautifully crafted essays, designed to make me look like a good writer. Or pray-er. Whatever I am.

I've also attempted to pray out loud. In the shower, while driving, etc. Often I turn off the radio and just sit in silence, waiting for the words to come.

What do I need? A good dose of "boldness" when I pray? He knows my heart, right? He knows what I'm thinking. He knows I struggle with prayer. Can't He just take my prayers out of my heart? Why isn't that ok?

I find comfort in the fact that I'm not alone in my prayerlessness. When I first found this quote I cried because it expresses what I feel every time I try to pray.

"There is a moment between intending to pray and actually praying that is as dark and silent as any moment in our lives. It is the split second between thinking about praying and really praying. For some of us, this split second may last for decades. It seems, then, that the greatest obstacle to prayer is the simple nature of beginning. . . . How easy it is, and yet-- Between us and the possibility of prayer there seems to be a great gulf fixed: an abyss of our own making that separates us from God." --Emilie Griffin

Maybe the prayer that God finally answers, the one that I've waited for for so long, will be the one rasping deep down in my soul--that my prayers will finally have words.