Let’s Run
January 4, 2023
ACTS XXIX
Happy New Year!
Just recently, Mary Guilfoyle on our team wrote a reflection based on last Sunday’s Gospel. We in ACTS XXIX have been pondering what she wrote the past few days and found it so rich that we wanted to share it more broadly.
Let us run in this new year to follow the Lord!
“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly hosts praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!’ When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us. And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger.
- LUKE 2:13-17
Like you perhaps, I pray with these scriptures year in and year out and, sadly, the story that’s unfolding can become one that I’m far too familiar with and, consequently, I fail to be moved by “this thing that has happened.”
As I prayed with these words from Luke earlier this week, however, the line the Lord italicized and bolded for me was this one, “Let us go over to Bethlehem.” Given the familiarity I just confessed to, I oftentimes simply stumble into Bethlehem rather than journeying to Bethlehem, intentionally as did the obedient and attentive shepherds. Some translations of this passage tell us that the shepherds not only left for Bethlehem but that they ran!
They ran!
In this season of life, I don’t run much anymore. But I can run spiritually if I’m open to God’s grace. Perhaps this year, with our hearts renewed by The Rescue Project, the story that powerfully unpacks what God has done for us in His Son, God is inviting us to press into the grace He’s offering to see with fresh eyes all that’s happening in Bethlehem and to run there. Because what’s happening there is the commencement of the greatest rescue mission in all of human history. Out of His extraordinary love, Jesus has left His royal throne of glory for you and for me, taken on human flesh, and rescued us from Death and all that holds us bound.
Together, in haste, let’s abandon our places of comfort and familiarity, wherever and whatever they may be, and put our hearts on the line again before Him in worship and adoration. Let’s thank Him for coming to rescue us and then, as the shepherds did, go and tell everyone about the One they encountered at the end of their run to Bethlehem.
