If you think YOUR job is tedious, try saving the world …

If you ask a child what they would like to do when they grow up, chances are they will respond with something they think would be exciting.

Most kids don’t dream of doing something difficult and tedious.

Astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered the planet Pluto, probably thought exploring the universe would be an exciting job. Yet, his significant discovery would come only after great persistence in his work.

After astronomers calculated a probable orbit for this “suspected” heavenly body, Tombaugh took up the search in March of 1929. Time magazine  recorded the investigation:

“He examined scores of telescopic photographs each showing tens of thousands of star images in pairs under the dual microscope. It often took three days to scan a single pair. It was exhausting, eye-cracking work — in his own word, ‘brutal tediousness.’ And it went on for months. Star by star, he examined 20 million images. Then on February 18, 1930, as he was blinking at a pair of photographs in the constellation Gemini, Tombaugh suddenly came upon the image of Pluto! It was the most dramatic astronomic discovery in nearly 100 years.”

That doesn’t sound like exciting work, although the outcome was dramatic. If you think Tombaugh’s work was tedious, imagine God’s job of executing a perfect plan to provide the world with a Savior. That took millenia of patiently working out a plan He had prepared before He had created anything. Throughout human history, God was executing that plan, and on Christmas Day, a particularly great moment in that plan had arrived …

“But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children,” Galatians 4:4-5.

“So the Word [Jesus] became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son,” John 1:14.

So exciting was this moment in the execution of God’s plan that the angels, who were watching God at work, just couldn’t contain themselves any longer …

“Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others — the armies of heaven — praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased’,” Luke 2:13-14.

The birth of Christ is a wildly exciting part of God executing His plan. It’s not the end of the story, though, albeit a pivotal part of it. The pinnacle of God’s plan would take a few more decades before His strategy for saving the world would be culminated by Christ on a rugged cross.

But talk about an exciting moment! Even the angels couldn’t contain themselves!

So why should you try?

This is the season to unleash your joy, worship, and praise in celebrating God doing the glorious, tedious work of providing us with a Savior.

Rejoice!

Scotty