WITH MY GAZE TURNED EAST (BLOGMAS DAY NINE 2025)

(Post by: Madie Hobbs)

As we begin this Blogmas season, which leads us day by day toward one of the most important holidays in human history, I can’t help but reflect on some of the topics we’ve covered through this event in the past.

I usually make it a habit every year to go back and read the posts I penned last year, both to refresh my memory and to remind myself of the truths I need to hear as much as anyone. Last year I began by asking you the question, “What does Christmas consider of you?” as we discussed the living element of this holiday and its capacity to change with us across the years. We spoke about how to keep Christmas in what is quickly becoming a post-human society. I challenged us to consider what we really celebrate at Christmas and reminded us that no matter how much fire or despair we experience even dragons have their ending.

Now, as we wait with anticipation for the day this all leads to, I ask myself why that anticipation seems to lessen more with every passing year. I now find myself in a state of absolute stupor at the fact that Christmas time is upon us. It always comes so quickly these days, and I am always left regretting that I didn’t have more time to prepare.

But this was not always so. When I was a little girl, I remember the Christmas season being so long it was almost unbearable. It felt as though it stretched on and on, week after week. The days were taken up with preparing for the Christmas play at church, with Christmas services often conducted in candlelight, theatre performances I saw year after year but never got tired of.

In the middle of it all, there was home. Lit all the way through with Christmas lights and music and films, it felt like Christmas had a beating heart within my house. As the days wore on, I had such a welling up of emotions within me I thought I physically would not be able to withstand the wait. It felt, occasionally, as though I might miss it. Like the day might pass me by and I would have no say in the matter. Like there would simply be before Christmas, and after Christmas.

Sometimes, I wonder where that anticipation went. I know that as children, everything always feels longer, and our patience is so slightly developed we fear waiting will simply do us in. But I feel as though this anticipation should still be our friend around this time of year.

I won’t lie and say my anticipation didn’t have a little something to do with the transactional elements of Christmas. But now as an adult, when it is so much easier to decide to maintain your focus on a particular thing, you’d think the anticipation would only grow.

For isn’t the coming of Jesus what we should really marvel at? Isn’t the incarnation, the greatest miracle of human history, what should have us sitting in stupor and amazement before this joyous holiday?

As I have contemplated the beginnings of Christmas this year, I think of the marvel it all would have contained. I imagine Mary, who would have grown up hearing all the songs and stories about the coming Messiah, or Joseph, who loved Mary enough to trust her, even though rumors and segregation likely would have followed them their entire lives. I think of the shepherds, and their wonder at being the first to know of the Messiah’s birth, though they were the outcasts of society.

Don’t you think our anticipation would pale in comparison to theirs? Only it shouldn’t. For don’t we know all the songs and stories, don’t we love Jesus enough to endure some discomfort for the sake of the Kingdom, and are we not the outcasts He still pursues?

It is my goal this season, to grab hold of my anticipation again, to let it build so mercilessly in my life that waiting seems impossible, with my gaze turned to the east in the hope of my Savior’s coming. For what is Christmas, if not the season of waiting for something all too worthy of our full attention?

“He will heal all the broken
Take back what the enemy has stolen
With a fire in His eyes and freedom in His name
Oh Jesus You were worth the wait

He will die so we don’t have to
And then He’ll rise to make a way through
Forgiven by His love and covered in His Grace
Oh Jesus You were worth the wait

Every heart come and adore Him
Every knee bow before Him
The King of every king
Forever You will reign
Oh Jesus You were worth the wait”

~ Worth the Wait, Phil Wickham