“And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.
He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
– Luke 1:30-33
Christmas is one week away! December 25 is a Wednesday this year. It’s marked on most modern calendars. It doesn’t change. And while I’m not one of those church guys who believes the birth of Jesus actually happened on December 25… I am one of those church guys who trusts that it took a number of years for Christians to finally start a tradition of celebrating this festive day.
Why? Because Easter made them do it. You see without Christmas there can be no Easter and because of Easter … that celebration remembering Jesus being raised from the dead… after dying on a Roman cross … for the sins of the world… past, present and future… Christmas became a requirement! No Christmas. No Easter. Know Easter? Know Christmas! So…Christians have been celebrating the birth of Jesus for centuries, but it was during the reign of Roman Emperor Constantine in A.D. 336 that December 25 became the official day according to historians as the Bible does not record the month and day or year of the Savior’s birth.
And how did the story unfold? Besides the centuries long prophecy of God sending a Messiah… the Hebrew people expecting a new king? Not like we might imagine… and the gospel writer Luke recorded it like this… with an angel coming to an unsuspecting young woman in the village of Nazareth in Judaea in what is now the country of Israel and said… “BEHOLD… you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.”
Easy as 1-2-3 and the world has not been the same ever since!
How do you feel when you hear the word, “BEHOLD?” Do you sense its power? Do you feel the surprise? The relief? Do you know that this word appears in the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible 1,298 times? And do you know the word, BEHOLD, appears in the Revised Standard Version (RSV) 1100 times? And do you know the word, BEHOLD, appears in the New International Version (NIV) … are you ready… only once! Just one time. Whoah.
Yet… BEHOLD… that word spoken from the pages of the Bible over and over sends a message… like when an angel of the Lord appeared to some unsuspecting shepherds saying to them, “Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; 11 for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” BEHOLD indeed!
I really like this word… BEHOLD… as when breaking it down into two unique stand-alone words… BE and HOLD…it gives us two unique and stand-alone messages to help us celebrate Christmas and all the other days of the year for that matter… as you know… faith matters!
To BE is the most important verb we learn in life… referring to our daily living quotient and the child of God identity each of us has… and HOLD leads us to thoughts like ‘stand fast’… ‘be persistent’… and ‘cling to’ all that is life giving… or even to twist it a bit and understand to ‘BEHOLD’ is to BE HELD in the story of God and finding favor in the safe arms of Jesus with wonder and awe … like Mary did when what the angel told her came true… with the world never being the same again.
BEHOLD. Merry Christmas!
The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Gigee is a long-time resident of Pearland, having pastored four churches over the last four decades in Texas and Louisiana. Read more following Brian’s blog ‘murmurings’ at https://briangigee.wordpress.com/. Send comments and/or questions to godworks247365@gmail.com.
