God at Work in the Details

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Well, do you ever go through a time in your life where you wonder where God is?

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You know, I can assure you that if you've surrendered your life to Him that He is busy

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at work in the details of your life.

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It may be behind the scenes a little, but He's busy at work.

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And the Christmas story is a perfect example of God at work in the details.

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So welcome to this week's Shabbat Shalom Devotional when I seek to share just a little

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inspiration and bring a little piece to the close of your very busy week.

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This week we're taking another break from our weekly Torah reading to talk about Christmas.

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I love Christmas.

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No, not the commercialized version of it.

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I'm talking about the biblical story, particularly what we read in the Gospel of Luke.

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The problem is that over time Christmas, the Christmas story, has really been relegated

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to the children in our churches.

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Well, why not?

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They love the Christmas story.

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It has a newborn little baby.

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It's got animals and little lambs, and it's got angels.

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And then we threw in the three kings coming to worship the little baby.

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Forget that the three kings weren't really there at the major story in the Bible, but

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nevertheless, kids loved this.

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But you know, for adults, we need to realize just how exciting and amazing that story is.

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It is filled with details that are easily overlooked.

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The angel Gabriel, have you ever thought about why the angel Gabriel?

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Why did he go to Galilee?

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Why to the village called Nazareth?

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And why did this particular Jewish virgin named Mary?

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Weren't there lots of other Jewish virgins?

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Why this one?

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I don't have time to answer those questions, but I'm just saying as you seek out the answers,

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the story becomes fascinating.

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Now I want to tell you that it goes all the way back to the Hanukkah story, to the Hasmonean

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dynasty and kingdom that happened.

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And all of this is in between the Old Testament and the New.

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So a lot of our Christian readers are unaware of that period of history and how God was

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getting everything in place so that then, boom, Matthew chapter one verse one happens

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and the New Testament begins.

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But we don't always understand the setting for the beginning.

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So I have done two previous episodes where I've taught on this inter-testamental period

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and how God used it to set the stage for the Christmas story for the beginning of the New

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Testament.

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So we're going to link to those two episodes in today's show notes.

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They are back in my 3D Jesus series.

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One's called Setting the Stage and the other one's called The Birth of Jesus.

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But now to my point, on a personal level, I recently found out an amazing little fact,

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a coincidence, a chance encounter that happened in my life, well, 40 years ago.

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I only just found out about it now.

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And it revealed to me the hand of God that was at work in my life, behind the scenes,

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in the details, and I simply had not even known it until he let me know.

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I believe when we surrender our lives to him that as Christians we call that accepting

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Jesus and being born again, at that moment we step into an amazing story that has been

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at work since the beginning of time.

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We step into a history that began way before Christmas but prepared the way for Christmas.

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And that master weaver of history, the God we serve, is preparing the world now for his

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next great act and for the culmination of all of his promises and covenants and all

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of history.

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When we step into that story, life becomes full of surprises and details, some of which

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we won't even know until we reach heaven.

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So this Christmas, read the story in Luke a little slower, taking in more of the details

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and recognizing the hand of God at work in all of them.

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And with that, I wish all of you a wonderful Christmas and Shabbat Shalom.