A reminder that Jubilee is coming

Advent. Otherwise known as Christmas.

You know the story. No, not that one! (Not about old Saint Nick or Rudolph or the Grinch, or the North Pole, or Chuck Norris playing in Santa Claus 2 — yeah, I know it was Tim Allen, just seeing if you were awake yet. Its early here.)

You know the real story. Everyone can recite it. A star in the West, wise men from Babylon following it for a year or more. It leads them to Bethelhem where they find a young child, just weaned, whom they worship, warning his parents to flee to Egypt.

Rewind that story to a cold September evening, when Caesar required that the Empire be given a census, and a head tax. A newly wed couple come to Bethlehem, the City of David, to pay their tax, and looking for lodging. She is very pregnant, and soon they are bedded down in a barn, in a stall with fresh hay, where she gives birth to a human child, who is also the Son of God.

“The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles: The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death Light has dawned.”

Jesus’ birth, which we celebrate this December, is God’s way of saying that there will be a Jubilee, a time for love, peace and joy all over the earth for all Mankind, when the one who came as an infant, as a savior on a cross, comes again as a King bearing gifts for us all.