bible.com/bible/1/mrk.6.3.KJV

bible.com/bible/1/luk.2.15-20.KJV

ch December, we celebrate Jesus’s incarnation by remembering that first Christmas morning. 

The next time advent rolls around and you fix your eyes on the baby in the manger, I would encourage you to expand the aperture to view the rest of the scene. Take a moment to focus not just on the newborn king, but also on the home he was born into and what that meant for Jesus’s future work. 

From the very beginning of time, God knew that He would have to send Jesus to earth to ransom us. Knowing this—and knowing the ultimate purpose of Jesus’s life on earth—the fact that God chose for Jesus to grow up in the home of Mary and a carpenter named Joseph should stop us in our tracks. 

God could have placed Jesus in a priestly household like the prophet Samuel or John the Baptist. He could have grown up in the household of a Pharisee like the Apostle Paul. But instead, God placed Jesus in the household of a craftsman, doing work that likely looked very similar to the work you and I do today.

Biblical scholar Dr. Ken Campbell has pointed out that the Greek word tektōn that most of our Bibles translate as “carpenter” in Mark 6:3, would more accurately be translated as “builder,” someone who “worked with stone, wood, and sometimes metal” to create new things. According to Dr. Campbell, Jesus and Joseph essentially operated a family-owned small business, “negotiating bids, securing supplies, completing projects, and contributing to family living expenses.”

Sound familiar? It should. In first-century Jewish culture, it was likely artisans and craftspeople like Jesus and Joseph whose work looked most similar to ours. 

That truth gives great dignity and meaning to the work you and I do to rearrange creation each day. If you ever doubt that your work matters or that your calling is just as significant as that of a pastor or “full-time missionary,” remember Christmas. Remember that that little baby would grow up to roll up his sleeves and remind us of the goodness of work.

bible.com/bible/1/col.1.15-16.KJV

Let us begin by meditating on Jesus’s first appearance to humankind at the very beginning of time.

Today’s passages make clear that Jesus—along with God the Father and the Holy Spirit—was present at the creation of the world. Furthermore, “all things” were created through Christ. In other words, Jesus is the Creator God we read about in Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created.” 

Before God tells us He is love, before He tells us He is holy, before He tells us He is Savior, God wants you and I to know that He is a creative, productive, working God.

This idea of a God who works is unique in the long list of stories of the origin of the world. Every other religion claims that the gods created human beings to work and serve the gods. None would dare to say that God Himself works—much less introduce that fact in the first breath of the story.

This truth carries the utmost significance for the work we do today. Work is not a fringe thing or a meaningless means to an end. Work is central to who God is, and thus, central to who we are as His image bearers. That’s one of the great meanings of this first revelation of Jesus Christ.

And it’s not just any work that God does. It’s creative work—the work of taking risks to create new things for the good of others. It’s the work of entrepreneurs and artists, storytellers and sales executives, marketers and mothers. And as we will see tomorrow, it’s the type of work Jesus did when he came to earth to be born into the home of a carpenter.

bible.com/bible/1/luk.19.38.KJV

apps.apple.com/us/app/o-my-soul-meditation-sleep/id1493998000

Click on the link above if you would like to read the Scripture Reading for today. God bless you. Have a glorious Sunday!

www.todayintheword.org/issues/2022/the-weeping-prophet/daily-devotional/keeping-the-sabbath/

Click on the link above to read the Daily Devotional from Today in the Word. May God bless and keep you. May His face shine upon you and give you peace. Amen. Have a blessed day.