Bits and Pieces

While driving to church Sunday morning, I heard two men on the radio discussing the loss of a child. One man’s son who died after an auto accident became the subject of the talk. The initial impact of the crash hadn’t killed him, but the son and the driver had been at a party drinking alcohol. Trying to avoid legal trouble, both boys fled the scene. The son sustained injuries and slowly bled to death. He hadn’t died in the crash, but died because he hadn’t sought medical help after the accident.

The father shared a story of being at the funeral home. Many of his son’s friends thronged to the funeral parlor to pay their respects. Quoting the father, he told them, “Your being here won’t change anything, but your being here means everything.” I thought how true. Things that we say or do may not be able to change another person’s difficult situation, but our being there often means more than anything that we can do.

I want to share another thought. I heard a biblical scholar semi-explain the visit of the angels to the shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem. These shepherds were raising sacrificial lambs for the Temple to be propitiation for sin. It meant that these yearling lambs had to be firstborn males and without spot or blemish. Often the shepherds would swaddle and wrap these lambs in cloth to protect them and prevent damage from occurring. The angel’s announcement, “Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger” meant something very much different than what we now think. The pronouncement was a foretelling of the Christ child as the sacrifice for world’s sins. Those words of comparison must have puzzled the shepherds.

A final bit is another bit of knowledge that I learned about Christ in the tomb after His crucifixion. When the disciples visited the empty tomb, Christ’s grave clothes were lying, yet He was not in them. The napkin that had covered His face was wrapped together in another place. It was another historical representation of an Old Testament tradition.

When the master sat at his table to eat, he might leave the table for some reason. While he was gone, the servants would look to see how he left his napkin. If it was tossed haphazardly onto the table, he was finished eating and they could clear the table, but if the master folded it and placed it on the table, the master wasn’t finished and would be back. And so it is with Christ, He will be coming back.