The events associated with the birth of the Savior occurred
in a miraculous time during an age of miracles.
It was also an era of grinding poverty, breathtaking opulence, and many
gradations of wealth in between. People
were ignorant, well educated, parochial in vision, and metropolitan in
view. Religious beliefs involved
spurious superstitions, animistic traditions, polytheistic practices,
monotheistic faith, and sophisticated atheism.
That is to say that those times and ours have more in common
than we might have supposed, which is the point of my writing this evening. Perhaps we create too much distance between
us and the birth of the Savior. Measured
in human lives, 2000 years is a long time.
In the eternal measures of God and heaven, it must be acknowledged as
being brief, a matter of yesterday and common memory.
That being true, it would be odd to assume that God, whose
miracles were on prominent display in Judea of long ago, would work by miracles
yesterday and not do so today. The lack
of belief in either one logically undermines faith in the other, because it assumes
limits on either God’s ability or His willingness to work by miracles, a
possibility hard for the mind to accept.
The disbelief in either ancient or modern miracles inclines the mind to
reject God’s miraculous interventions entirely.
For some it can be much easier to believe in miracles of the
past than to recognize modern ones. Others
may be willing to see God’s hand in their own lives but consider the ancient scriptural
accounts as morality stories, the details of which should not be taken too
literally. We find examples of both
among our contemporaries and throughout history.
Of course, among the sophisticated set have always been those
who doubted miracles of both past and present.
With no recognition of personal involvement in miracles, they reject the
word of those who actually witnessed them.
They are quick to dismiss others’ experiences, with nice attitudes of condescension
for the “lovely legends” and “faith traditions,” that must be taken figuratively
if accepted at all. When those who know
assert the reality of the wonders, the sophisticates can be known to turn to
anger and scorn.
And yet reality can be stubborn and defy rejection. Angels delivering messages from God to
priests in the Temple and to shepherds in the fields, God speaking to common
men by dreams, signs from God to men in distant places motivating them to
“traverse afar” to witness God’s works of salvation, and many other examples of
heaven’s direct involvement in human affairs can be easier to dismiss if they
only happened in hazy history. When
presented with facts of past and present miracles skeptics are hard put to know
how to deal with them, other than to dismiss them out of hand and cast ignorant
aspersions on those claiming any direct and tangible involvement with Divinity. Nevertheless, the facts remain.
It works the other way, too.
Denying modern miracles makes it easier to deny their existence long ago and to convert them into lovely stories instead of real world evidences of
the power and love of God and of His involvement in our lives. If there are no miracles now, then they were
unlikely to exist in the past. The
miracles attendant to the Savior’s birth are transformed into fabulous
fabrications rather than marvelous signs of the reality of the birth of the Son
of God. The reality of modern miracles,
however, attests to the reality of the miracles recorded in ancient scripture.
Admittedly, with rare exceptions, miracles are not for the
edification of the faithless anyway. The
Lord usually provides room for disbelief for those who choose to disbelieve and
for their own sake spares the doubtful from divine confirmation of what they
doubt. The Lord did not send angels to
invite the leaders of society to the stable in Bethlehem, but instead He called
out to those who readily accepted His invitation to witness the baby laid to
rest in the cattle’s manger. He did send
signs, and through the signs a summons, to the believing wise men of the East who had faith that this child was to
be the King of Kings.
Similarly, in modern times, to prepare the way for the
approach of the Savior’s second coming, the Lord has reached out through
angels, heavenly messengers, and by His own voice to the humble faithful who
are ready to believe His word, confirming their belief with many and miraculous
signs and wonders.
It is a lot easier to believe in the wonders of the Savior’s
birth when we witness and receive their like in our own day. Our unchangeable God works by similar
methods with all of His children. And the saints of all ages rejoice.
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