THE FARMER’S ALMANAC, as well as the long-range meteorological forecast, may give official-sounding information about a wet winter in an area of drought, but until the rains fall and fulfill the prediction, our reasons for belief are based on faith, not fact. The evidence for a weather prediction or any other authoritative pronouncement is not in declaration but in demonstration.
There’s a spectacular promise given in the Old Testament prediction in Numbers, spoken, against all odds, by Balaam (the rebel prophet who resisted the Almighty’s plan and was scolded by his own donkey!). He was not by any means the most reliable forecaster of the future, nor the most likely mouthpiece for divine authority. But here it is: “Like stretching palm-groves . . . like gardens beside a river, like aloes . . . like cedar trees beside the water, water shall flow from [the LORD’S] buckets and his descendants shall have abundant water.” Buckets of water. With today’s vast irrigation systems a bucket o f water doesn’t sound like much, but in an arid land like Israel every drop counts. And buckets from God were clearly enough to bring abundance.
There’s immense power in small things. An atom. A seed. A word. Such power is paradoxical. It was the Almighty’s supreme authority, and the power to make that authority effective, that made the paradox o f the Incarnation so stunning—God becoming as small as we are. One of the three Persons of the Godhead giving up unlimited power (Paul calls it “emptying” in Philippians 2), becoming downwardly mobile, wordless for nine months in the womb, a helpless human infant, born in humility and poverty.
Again and again Jesus demonstrated this kind of paradoxical authority in his own life. By refusing to be made a king by a momentarily enthusiastic throng. By proclaiming, and acting out the principle, “Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant.” By his words, which he clearly applied to himself: “Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over.”
Buried in a woman’s body. Birthed in a cold cave. Buried in a lifetime of ignominy. Buried again in the tomb. Buried in human hearts to be birthed and rooted and risen again—in us. God’s buckets of water will do it—drench and nourish the seed in us that makes more seeds—a hundredfold. Balaam would be surprised.
From Luci Shaw, “Third Monday of Advent,” in GOD WITH US: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas, edited by Greg Penn& Gregory Wolfe
