First of all, I apologize for the lack of paragraph breaks. My past two entries have not had them for some reason. They show up in edit mode, but not when I post. Which is why I posted the entry before last about five times. My apologies if you receive an e-mail from Google reader when I post. I'm sure you didn't want to read about High School Musical on Ice five times. Hopefully they will magically reappear, but I wanted to apologize up front for the non-aesthetic nature just in case.

Now, the reason for the post is because I just realized something pretty interesting while doing my Bible study. This semester we are doing "Jesus, the One and Only" by Beth Moore. I did this study about six years ago, and really felt led to go back and do it again. This decision has already been confirmed many times, and I'm so excited to see what God has in store for us. There are almost 15 ladies coming to my house on Tuesday nights to study the Word together. What a blessing!

Anyway, I was doing my lesson a little while ago and it was talking about when Joseph and Mary took Jesus to the temple to present him to the Lord and make their sacrifice. If you are familiar with the story, there was a man there named Simeon who had been told by the Holy Spirit that he would not die until he had seen the Lord's Christ. So when Mary and Joseph came in to the temple, Simeon took him in his arms and said,

"Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel."

What caught me about this was realizing that Mary and Joseph heard from the time Jesus was an infant that He would be a "light for revelation" to the Gentiles. The very next verse says that they "marveled at what was said about him."

I looked back through the proclamations made to both Mary and Joseph, and even Zechariah, to see if anything was said about Jesus having anything to do with Gentiles. There isn't anything. I know there are prophecies about the Messiah in the Old Testament that do mention Gentiles. And it's highly likely that Mary spent some of those months of pregnancy doing some research on what had been prophesied about her son. I'm sure Bible Gateway would have come in particularly handy for her.

But it just made me wonder if this was the first time they realized that their son was not just going to be the Jewish savior. I wonder if they understood at all the kind of eternal, world-wide impact their baby boy would have. How could they have ever gotten their sleep-deprived brains around that?

Imagine, being the earthly parents of the Christ child. It blows my mind to even try and grasp. I know I struggle with feelings of inadequacy as a mom. What must that have been like?

What a crazy plan God had. I'm so thankful for it.