.png)
The angels sang it first. When the sky filled with the heavenly host, their songs were crying out, "Come and see what God has done!"
The shepherds heard it and ran into the city of Bethlehem where what they had heard from the angels was confirmed with their own eyes. There, lying in a manger, was God in the form of a baby. Then they went into all the city telling everyone they saw the glorious news.
The same message of "Come and see what God has done!" was declared by all creation from the stars in the black sky to the animals being prepared for sacrifice. They all knew what was happening.
Jesus, Jehovah's Salvation, was born.
Years later the woman with an issue of blood could say the same thing when, with one simple touch of Christ's hem, she was healed. The words of "See! See what God has done!" were on the lips of the Samaritan woman with a sordid past; of Mary Magdalene, once possessed with demons; and of Zaccheus, once a greedy tax collector. Paul, delivered from legalism and hatred, told the world about it and implored us to do the same; to lift our voices and say -
Come and see what God has done!
What is your life like? Where have you been? What have you done? One way or another, we are all needy people desperate for divine help. We have all been crushed by loss, abuse, chronic illness or apathy. We have all had our hearts led astray and our minds flooded with darkness. We have our long days and even longer nights pacing the floors of hospital waiting rooms or sitting in somber silence in funeral homes. We tearfully sign our name on divorce papers, we relive painful moments of sin and selfishness. But... Jesus came for this.
Were the angels rejoicing that God was humbling Himself and putting on the form of a human to serve and save a world that could care less? No.
The good tidings of great joy was that only God could save... and He chose to save. He chose to come to a wicked world and buy back the world with His own blood. Gloria! could be sung because promises of deliverance and salvation had been made for centuries and finally the promise was becoming reality. The helpless baby in the manger was actually the Hero of all history who entered into our broken world and broken lives with the promise that He could make all things new.
What God began in Bethlehem that night was finished on Golgotha's hill 33 years later. Reconciliation between the created and the Creator was made possible when Jesus veiled Himself in flesh and bone and lived the life we could never live. What wonder. What glory!
Wherever you are on the road of life, make sure you go to Bethlehem in your spirit this Christmas season. The lights, the music, the Nativity scenes and our very life stories all cry the same thing:
Come and see what God has done.