On the Twelfth Day of Christmas (Israel)

ON THE TWELFTH day of Christmas my True Love sent to me twelve drummers drumming.

Imagine the reality of heaven.  Ponder being greeted by twelve drummers drumming, a representative for each tribe of Israel, drumming you in through the gates of eternity’s threshold.

What we’re entering is a gift — nobody can take for granted the right to enter heaven.  It can only ever be a gift.  It can only ever be grace that makes it possible.

Jacob was renamed Yisrael (Israel), meaning “God strives” or “God prevails” or “struggle with God” in recognition that he could not overcome God when he wrestled all night with the Angel of God (see Genesis 32:22-32).

Israel is a reminder that we struggle with God and that we struggle with life.  Indeed, it’s actually a very Jewish concept to struggle, particularly as we discuss our differences — especially theological differences.

The gift of God on the twelfth day of Christmas is the reminder of the number 12 in the symbolism of Israel, and the gift it is to know that we’re destined to struggle.

Of all the days of Christmas it’s appropriate to finish on it’s the twelfth day where the number twelve depicts not only Israel who struggled with God, but it depicts just as much the meaning of perfection and completion (as does the number seven).  This means that, like Israel, we’re bound to struggle with God, and we’re bound to do so in the totality of our lives.  Not only that, but God will prevail, not only over us, but for us, in the totality of our lives.

It’s a gift to know these things; that God, by the character and nature of life, prevails.  Because God prevails, Christ came, was born, lived, and died, to reconnect us with the Father.

There’s no benefit in us going against the grain of life or God or his purposes for righteousness and justice in this life.

It’s a gift to know that there’s no purpose in life other than the purposes that God anoints by his divine will, power and Spirit.

On this final day of Christmas so blessed are we to consider that our purpose in this life is to serve God’s purposes.

On the cusp of Christmas, the Christ-child came to remind us, even in a baby’s body, of the Sovereign purpose of God, to redeem humankind; to do a thing humanity could not, in all eternity, do for itself.

On the twelfth and final day of Christmas my True Love sent to me twelve drummers drumming, eleven pipers piping, ten lords a-leaping, nine ladies dancing, eight maids a-milking, seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying, five golden rings, four calling birds, three French hens, two turtledoves and a partridge in a pear tree.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.