I Can Only Imagine, Anyway

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

So there was NO PAUSE between verses twelve and thirteen. The angel who appeared to the shepherds recorded in the second chapter of the Gospel, the "Good News", of Luke and announced the birth of Christ the Lord and even told the shepherds where they could find him, and in the next instant, not even giving the shepherds time to move out of their awestruck poses, "a multitude", variously defined as a great number or host -- a host of the heavenly host? -- and a great number of people gathered together, a crowd, a throng, the state or character of being many, numerousness, the multitude, the common people, and the masses "of the heavenly host" appears and praises God for what He has done. (All those definitions come courtesy of Dictionary.com.)

And if ONE angel appearing to the shepherds filled their field of vision with fear and trembling and anticipation, you can try to imagine -- but will not succeed, we are just that limited in terms of perception and imagination -- what the appearance of a multitude (number unknown) of said angels (verse fifteen is explicit this is a host of angels -- would be like! We are not told all of the words and actions comprising this praise of God given by the angels here, and I would imagine the next verse is just the tip of the iceberg. There is much more that you and I can do, have done, and will do to praise God than what we say. But more times than not it behooves us to just listen, because we are really incapable of adding anything save the action of our own two feet, moving forward.

Am I getting ahead of myself here? Maybe. But the angels, the messengers of God, rejoicing here over what God has done in providing the Savior promised and reaffirmed for thousands of years then and even in our own day, thousands of years more -- to have this many come out of heaven and step into time -- says that what is coming, what has happened, is BIG. B - I - G. In fact, the biggest event of human history, the one that makes it possible for EVERYONE (not just the Jews, but also the Gentiles) to come to God and be saved from the consequences of sin, separation from God. There are those then and now who want to keep fellowship with God a Jew-only or Gentile-only club, but they miss the point entirely. A God Who cannot be available for everyone can be available for no one.