Vava's Question (Advent Day 13)

I feel like it wasn't that long ago that all of my kids were babies, learning how to crawl and babble and make mischief.  I'm aware on one level that they're growing up, but often my background pre-set expects them to still be so young.  So it really took my breath away the other day when Vava asked me "how do we know God's real, and not just our minds messing with us?" which is a pretty important question (and probably too advanced for me to tackle, but I did my best).  I told her that a lot of people have asked the same question, but for me, I hold on to the times God has told me things in my heart that I don't have any way of knowing, and they turn out to be true.  She asked for a few examples, and I shared some with her and encouraged her to keep asking questions.

When we watched The Star, one of the surprising elements for me was the tension, the fear, caused by Herod wanting to kill the new King.

After it ended, Vava was like "did that Pharaoh want to kill baby Jesus like he tried to kill baby Moses?"  And I explained to her that it was Herod, not Pharaoh, but that she's right - Jesus' story echoes the story of Moses, and both Pharaoh and Herod wanted to guard their throne against the threat of God's plans. And when I was looking up similarities to show Vava, I discovered that Moses himself prophesied that God would bring another prophet like him, a prophet to stand in between God and his people. 

And Moses told the people how they could know if prophets were speaking words from God, or if they were just making them up: the words they speak would come true.  God's word is true.

It was a realllllly long time between Moses' foretelling of Jesus and Jesus' arrival.  I am certain a lot of people started to doubt. So I love that God made Jesus' story such an obvious echo of Moses'. God sent a baby to save His people? Check.  Was placed in a non-cribby crib? Check.  Rescued from a murderous king? Check. Lived in Egypt? Check. Chose to serve the people of God rather than rule a second-hand kingdom? Check.

Anyway, I'm not an apologist but I just thought this cool aspect of the Christmas story gets forgotten sometimes. Moses was a forerunner, a picture, a preview and foreteller of Jesus; we can trust Moses' words because they came true.

And we can also trust a very good God who brought that question to Vava's heart.

Merry Christmas, friends.
xo.