Do you leave your Christmas shopping until the last minute?

Surveys show that many of us do, with some people putting off their gift-buying until Christmas Eve itself.

This is a risky practice, because more often than not, the gift you come up with will be rather…interesting, shall we say.

With the stores sold out of the most popular items and the most common sizes and colours, you’re reduced to choosing gifts that are sometimes not well matched to the recipient.

Such as an extra-small sweater (in purple, no less) for your hefty brother.

Or an electric drill for your great-aunt Elspeth.

Oh, well, I suppose there are always gift cards!

But sometimes last-minute ideas can be wonderful.

Think of the origin of the Christmas carol “Silent Night,” which dates back to Austria in 1818.

The story goes that on Christmas Eve in a little church in the town of Oberndorf, the local priest, Joseph Mohr, discovered that the church organ was broken. (Some accounts say that mice chewing through the bellows were to blame.) With no way of getting it fixed in time for the Christmas service, Joseph had to improvise.

So he pulled out a poem that he’d written several years before, and enlisted the help of the church organist, Franz Gruber, to set it to music. With the organ out of commission, Franz chose the guitar on which to play the new song for the congregation.

The resulting carol, “Silent Night,” has been cherished for two centuries now, and has become one of the most loved Christmas songs ever

Not too bad for a last-minute endeavour.

Thinking of eleventh-hour occurrences, what about the Christmas story itself in the Bible?

Frankly, the whole account of Jesus’ birth seems rather last-minute and haphazard:

No room at the inn for Mary and Joseph? The Messiah has to be born in a stable and placed in a manger? Seems like a bit more planning could have gone into this on God’s part.

But actually, everything unfolded precisely according to His plan.

The Scriptures in the Old Testament prophesying the Messiah’s birth were fulfilled to the letter. God’s purposes were accomplished in presenting the news of Jesus’ birth first to lowly shepherds instead of to religious bigwigs. It was all exactly as God meant it to be.

So as believers, what should we do when last-minute changes occur to our schedule that throw us into a tailspin?

Don’t worry. Don’t be alarmed. God might be up to something.

He might be setting something in motion that we can’t even glimpse the outlines of yet.

He might be birthing something entirely new in your life. He might be assembling a new partnership, incubating a new idea, or creating a new song.

And when God orchestrates it, it will be beautiful.

If you leave your Christmas shopping until the last minute, I can’t guarantee that you’ll come up with a winner.

But if you entrust your life into God’s hands, even eleventh-hour changes can’t derail His plan for you. When you trust in Jesus, you’ll always come up a winner!

© 2023 Lori J. Cartmell. All rights reserved.