Fullness of time

The term “fullness of time” came to mind as I admired the amaryllis blooming in brilliant orange quadruplets this morning on our kitchen table. Three weeks ago, it looked like a withered turnip. After weeks of winter fog and cold, we’re enjoying the display.

It’s appropriate that these fast-growing bulbs are popular for indoor blooming during Christmas. At the time of Jesus’ birth, the world was socked in by centuries of hopelessness. The long-ago prophecies of Someone to change that seemed to diminish with each turn of the seasons. Then it came—not as people thought, in the form of a warrior-king born in a palace, but in a baby born to a teenager in desperate poverty far from home.

Here’s the phrase in scripture: “But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son” (Galatians 4:4). Every one of scripture’s prophecies was fulfilled with Christ. By one person’s estimate, using just 48 prophecies, the mathematical probability of all of them being fulfilled in one person is 10 to the 57th power. That’s 10 with 57 zeroes after it.

As the buy-buy-buy ads spill out of your newspaper or prance across your television screen, remember that they’ve got it all wrong. Christmas is not about indulging one another, but marveling that God indulged us with the greatest gift of all, a way to be reconciled to Him forever.

And maybe that’s another reason the amaryllis bloom has a trumpet shape, as a special reminder of the eternal view: “Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52).If the birth of Jesus can overrule a probability of one in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,-000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000—let’s celebrate, the Christ-coming past and the Christ-return-future!