“When the angels had returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, ‘Let’s go to Bethlehem! Let’s see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.’ They hurried to the village and found Mary and Joseph. And there was the baby lying in the manger.” (Luke 2:15-16 NLT)
As we find our way in this new year, we’ll find it more meaningful and more satisfying if we view our life and what we encounter through the clear lens of our relationship with the One born in the manger so many years ago. According to Ralph W. Sockman: “The hinge of history is on the door of a Bethlehem stable.”
So much of what we fret about and with which we wrestle wouldn’t have such a hold on us if we could grasp the significance of what the infant Jesus grew to become and died to offer us. We want to compartmentalize and isolate our relationship with the living God, but what Jesus accomplished through the Cross has opened the door for us to walk with Him in a relationship that encompasses every detail of our lives.
Regardless of what happens in our life, when we are walking with Jesus, He will guide, guard, inform, and surround us with His comforting presence. We’re far too quick to trade the intimacy we can have in our relationship with the Lord Jesus for religious duties, obligations, rituals, and rules, which can be fine as long as we see them and hold them in their proper perspective.
But when we relegate our walk with Jesus to religious exercise or practice, we reduce our relationship to that which we can control and rather than nourish our friendship we treat Jesus like a picture on the wall or an artifact on a shelf. We depersonalize the Spirit of God and reduce Him to an idea rather than treat Him as the alive, active, and engaged Savior that He is.
It’s like treating our spouse and/or children as if they were invisible and didn’t have the ability to speak or interact with us. Because the invisible God became flesh and blood in the Person of His Son, Jesus has given visibility to who the Father is and what He desires for us to know about Him. He’s personable, relatable, loving, kind, compassionate, caring, as well as all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present and in many other ways, while different than us, He’s like us in that He shares many of the same feelings, aspirations, heartaches, pains, and avenues of joy and sorrow that we share.
To treat our relationship with Jesus simply as a “religion” is to be married and treat your spouse as an “institution.” We’re not saved and sanctified by a religion any more than, if we’re married, our spouse is a structure or set of documents. Jesus is a real Person who though not visible to our physical eyes is nonetheless visible in a thousand other ways.
He’s knowable in many of the same ways any other human being is knowable. We can carry on conversations with Him, hear Him laugh and cry, see Him smile and give expression to His emotions. Yes, of course, we “see” Him with the eyes of our heart, but it’s no less real and He’s no less alive to us.
Does it take time and effort to nurture our relationship with Jesus? Of course, but it’s no different than meeting someone who speaks a different language and taking the time and making the effort to learn to communicate with them. Though it will try you, it doesn’t have to be a chore, it can actually be revealing, uplifting, encouraging, and very enjoyable.
It’s taken me many years to feel comfortable speaking with my Savior, but because He opened the way to Himself through the “Hinge of History,” we can now nurture a relationship with Him that is literally as close as the air we breathe.
Food for thought.
Blessings, Ed 😊
Walking With Jesus 