I brought you up out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery. I sent Moses to lead you, also Aaron and Miriam. – Micah 6:4

Today’s Scripture Reading (December 31, 2016): Micah 6

New Year’s Eve 2016, a traditional time for looking back. It is amazing how often we seem to get to this time of the year, and we can’t wait to turn the page. I mean, next year has to be better than this one, doesn’t it? Except that this seems to be the dream of every New Year’s Eve. It always appears to have been a horrible year. So we can’t wait to move on.

Except that, that is rarely the truth. The reality is that the negatives almost always seem to loom larger than the positives. Even in our list of events, it is the negative ones that seem to get the press, and the things that go right seldom seem to get any notice. We are obsessed with what has gone wrong. Even our lists of significant deaths is much longer than the list of notable births. We just seem to want to orient ourselves toward the negative.

So God has to remind Israel through Micah of the good that God has done in their midst. The cry of the people is “look at all of the evil that you have done to us” or maybe more precisely “look at all the evil you have allowed to happen.” God’s response is to remind them of the good. “I was the one who brought you out of the land of Egypt and guided you to your homeland. I was the one who bought you back from slavery and gave you the ability to the Captains of your own destinies. I sent you leaders. You chased Moses away, but I brought him back to you to lead you out of Egypt. And I gave to him Aaron and Miriam. When you have cried out to me, I have been there.

But maybe that was the real problem. It has always been a lot easier to complain about God than to try to be a people that is in relationship with him. It is simpler to grumble about the way things are than to work to make them better.

So tonight 2016 ends. I don’t know what kind of a year it might have been for you. But try to see the positives that it brought. As far as the negatives are concerned, turning the page tonight from 2016 to 2017 won’t mean anything unless we are committed to the process of fixing what is wrong. And to do that effectively means working on our relationship with the one who was God over 2016 and will be God over 2017. We have to be willing to recognize the good that he has done - and is willing to do – as we get ready to turn the page.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Micah 7

Personal Note: Happy Birthday to my son-in-law Greg as we close out the year.

“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” – Micah 5:2

Today’s Scripture Reading (December 30, 2016): Micah 5

“I am what I was. I was not what I am. Now I am both.” It is an old Latin riddle, a riddle that was born out of the days when Christians and the church were trying to figure out their theology. This is a place where the Sunday School answer actually works (because in Sunday School the answer to every question is Jesus.) It speaks of difficult to understand comments like pre-existence and incarnation. With Jesus as the answer, the questions of the riddle are easily solved.

I am what I was – God. As Christians, we do not believe that we serve the creation of our God. Jesus is God, I recently read an assertion the Bible never actually states that Jesus was God, but I am not sure how they arrived at that conclusion. Even Jesus admitted it before his Jewish critics. “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I Am” (John 8:58)! The Jews did not miss the assertion. “I Am” is the sacred name of God. The words of Jesus were severe enough that the Jews began to pick up stones in an effort to execute him on the spot for having the audacity of saying that he was God.

I was not what I am – human. It is the beauty that we celebrate every year at this time. The Incarnation – God became human. He wasn’t always like us, but at his choice he dressed himself with our flesh and became like us.

Now I am both – God and human. He retains this humanness that he took on himself in his being. He understands us as we struggle through this life because he became like us. He took on our flesh, and now his humanness mediates for us. Jesus did not throw away his humanity at his death and resurrection. The importance of the resurrection is more that he was willing to carry his humanity into eternity than it was about his defeating of death.

This prophecy of Micah alludes to the first part of the riddle. The one who was to come was of ancient origins. The use of the name Bethlehem Ephrathah probably goes beyond just differentiating between the two Bethlehems. Ephrathah was likely the name of the village before it became Bethlehem. The symbolism is that the Messiah, while he would be of the line of David of Bethlehem, his roots would extend much further back than that.

He was God. He had always been God. And in Bethlehem, God would begin his journey to save us.  

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Micah 6