itsawonderfilledlife

Can you feel it? Hear it? It is emerging from all over our communities. It comes cloaked in joy, noise, warmth and excitement. It begins to appear when the summer is full, but now it does so boldly, loudly, brightly.

It’s the hustle and bustle of the coming season. It’s the red cups, and colored lights, and festive music, and craft fairs, and peppermint everything, and cardboard packages delivered to our doors.

For the next six weeks this season of celebration will be in the forefront, singing out it’s song in extrovert fashion.

There will be those of us who join in the dance, like a conga line, embracing that which brings us feelings of joy, nostalgia. There will be those who oppose the flamboyance of nativities, conifers and carols, calling them religious indoctrination.

In the midst of this season of hustle and bustle, of financial cost, of parties, and refreshments, and decorating, and songs of the season

quietly grows a branch

Zechariah 6:12 says,
“tell him this is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Here is the man whose name is the Branch, and he will branch out from his place and build the temple of the Lord” (my servant the branch – Matthew Henry Commentary)

Jeremiah 33:15 says,
“In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line; he will do what is just and right in the land” (the branch of righteousness – Matthew Henry Commentary)

Isaiah 11:1 says,
“A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit” (a rod out of the stem of Jesse and a branch out of his roots – Matthew Henry Commentary)

and Isaiah 4:2 says,
“in that day the Branch of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land will be the pride and glory” (the branch of the Lord – Matthew Henry Commentary)

Christ is the branch that grows, whose arrival is reason for the season … but Christ is not the reason for the hustle and bustle.

The environment of Christ’s birth was filled with hustle and bustle. His parents had travelled to the homeland of his earthly father, Joseph, to be counted for taxation purposes of the government. Bethlehem was packed with the noise and smells and stresses of the people and animals that descended on the town.

Advent, the season of anticipation, of waiting, has not even begun … but still, in the hustle and bustle grows a branch. In the quiet, it grows, stretching out, for us … to give life, to produce the fruits of this branch.

O come, thou Rod of Jesse, free
thine own from Satan’s tyranny;
from depths of hell thy people save,
and give them vict’ry o’er the grave.