Undercover Jesus

As I sat doing my makeup this morning, I decided the quiet was too...well, quiet...and turned on Spotify.  I tried to figure out which playlist I was going to choose when I smiled and clicked the last played list.  Can you guess what it was?

No?

Well, I'll give you a hint...I LOVE this time of year...

Got it now?

Christmas music!!!  Ohmylanta, how I love Christmas and its music!  And, everything else about it, too!

So as I sat and hummed along and made progress on my "work face", one song stood out.  It's a song I've listened to a ton of times.  A song from my absolute favorite group.  Take a listen and then come back. :)

Oh, how I love that song!  But today, these lyrics stopped my mascara applying:

Endless hope and relentless joy started with a Baby Boy

Oh, before that silent night

No Savior and no Jesus Christ

The world cried out so desperately

And the Baby Boy was the reply,

Yes, Heaven's reply was a Baby Boy.

Heaven's reply was a tangible, bouncy Baby Boy.  Definitely an interesting reply to a desperate world.  But what that Baby Boy did turned the world on its heels and sent a way for each one of us to have the opportunity at eternal life.

So, then my mind wandered further.  Sometimes it needs a leash.

I thought about what if God had sent Jesus to us undercover.  It's possible I've been reading too many books lately by Lynette Eason, Irene Hannon, Terri Blackstock, Dani Pettrey and the like.  (If you haven't read those authors, you're missing out, by the way!)  Many of their stories have a "who-dun-it" tangled up in the story and the most recent one by Dani Pettrey I finished really did have an undercover agent in it.  

That character, Luke, was placed into a foreign country and was tasked with finding out the who, where and when of the next attacks on American soil.  In doing all of this, he was placed in grave danger many times and lost all contact with his loved ones.  He lived a solitary, lonely and dangerous existence.  In the end, because it is a fiction book, he was reunited with his lost love, his family and friends AND took down the terrorist. ;)  

But, I'm glad that I don't have an undercover jesus.  I have a very real, very tangible, very loving Jesus.  I have access to Him night or day, in good days and bad, in storms and in the calm...literally in every moment.

An undercover jesus would have not been able to care for me in the everyday moments of my life.  He would not have been there to catch tears on the rough days.  He would not been awaiting my outstretched arms during worship.  He would not have been available.

Sure, he'd be out "fighting the bad guy" which I suppose is something I need, too.  And, no worries, He's taking on Satan for us, too.  But, I am human.  I'm relational.  I'm real.  And I need the everyday contact with my Jesus.

Undercover jesus just wouldn't have worked out for a world of messy, needy, relational people.  

We needed that Baby Boy who grew into a Man who told us of His Father's love, who spread love and joy everywhere He went, who also wasn't afraid to speak truth...we needed exactly what we got in that Baby Boy.