Christmas Bruise

Genesis 3 is often seen as the first scriptural glimpse we have of a promised Messiah. In His curse of the serpent, God promises “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” God promises that, at some point in time, an offspring will rise up to deal with the serpent.

The idea conveyed is that the serpent will strike a blow but one of far less severity than what he will receive. I personally would rather have my heel bruised than my head. Of course, on the cross we see an apparent win for the serpent as Jesus dies. Then Sunday comes and we see that the bruised heel lasts only three days while the bruised head means the final and ultimate demise of Satan and death and sin.

The passage of time between the promise in Genesis and the arrival of Jesus is significant. There is plenty of time for doubts to build, for lies and untruth to fester, for hearts to grow fickle and for wayward sheep to wander. For me any wait beyond a few days is difficult. I can’t imagine living in that waiting where time was not measured in years or decades or centuries but ages.

And yet God always gives reason for hope. He is always seen to be at work in providing for and protecting his people. There always is a ‘remnant’ that is faithfully watching and waiting for the Messiah.

In an age of immediacy, I don’t think we fully appreciate that waiting and longing. When the Old Testament writers cry out “how long oh Lord” I don’t think we understand. We can place our waiting within our own short time frames but that waiting is never placed against a backdrop of generations and generations of waiting.

We can order our Christmas presents on Amazon and have them delivered in as short as a few hours, even wrapped if we want. We turn on Netflix or TiVo or YouTube and access whatever it is that we may have missed out on. With our sense of patience and waiting often measured in hours or days it is no wonder that we have a hard time being patience with God in prayer.

Our persistence is pitiable. We multiply our sorrows with our impatience. Rather than resting in God’s goodness and faithfulness, we let our hearts be pulled along by what is seen or touched and felt. We often fail to pray simply because God’s answers to prayers don’t fit our short timelines.

The time between Genesis and Jesus is known in Galatians 4:4 as “the fullness of time”. God’s wisdom chose that huge number of years to pass before an ‘offspring’ was born to finally take care of that serpent.

May the patience of God’s people for all those generations be an encouragement to us. May we pray harder and longer. May we grow in patience. May our hearts rest in the goodness and surety of God’s promises, all the more so because we know that those promises have their yes and amen in Jesus Christ.

The jubilant scenes captured in advent celebration of shepherds, Simeon, angels, wise men, and many others is the fruit of hopeful, expectant waiting. I’m sure you have prayer requests you are carrying with you this season. I can guarantee that you have not yet held out hope for so long as those we witness in Jesus birth.

Hold out hope. Keep fighting in prayer. Keep trusting in God’s goodness. In the fullness of time you will see His wisdom revealed.