If God were to write a resume, what kinds of things might he include on it? One thing is for certain: it would not be like any other resume ever written. Who else has worked as a universe creator, galaxy-spinner, nuclear engineer, quantum mechanic, genetics specialist, wind-maker, earth-shaker, sky-walker, life-giver? His resume is endless. One important role it would include is Event Planner.

God is the ultimate Event Planner. We see evidence of his extraordinary ability throughout Scripture, but especially in the incarnation. He started planning a long time before the event, laid the groundwork perfectly, and pulled it off with enormous grace and supernatural ability.

After Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph took their new baby to Jerusalem to make the required sacrifice. God led Simeon, an old man living there (Luke 2:25), into the temple at just the right moment for the four of them to meet. George Balanchine himself could not have choreographed it all so well. (Of course, Choreographer is also on his resume.)

But even the greatest choreographer needs dancers who know the steps. God will not use marionettes. His people need to learn the dance, and old Simeon was well-practiced in it. He knew the steps.

I’ve wondered what Mary and Joseph thought when this old man took their special baby from them. Were they worried? Was the old guy some kind of crank? Some religious nut? Was Jesus safe with him?

Ah, but Simeon was one of the great ones, though the people around Jerusalem may not have noticed. Who pays attention to old men with no money and no political power? But that didn’t matter to Simeon—he did not dance for them! He lived before the Audience of One, and it was his approval that motivated him.

He took the baby from them and felt the consolation of Israel, for which he had so long watched and waited, squirming in his arms. And Israel’s consolation weighed about six pounds. He looked down at the Lord’s Messiah, (2:26), and though his feet were still on the ground his heart soared to heaven.

Filled with perfect contentment, this beautiful, holy man says to God, “Dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation . . .” Other people saw a baby carried by a poor woman and her husband, but Simeon’s eyes saw salvation. Not only had the old man taught his feet to dance, he had taught his eyes to see.       

What he says next (2: 31) brings us back to God’s event planning superpowers: “…your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people.” Here we see the Event Planner at the top of his game. The word translated “prepared” is the same word used of preparing a room for guests, of preparing a meal, and of the preparations under way for us in our “Father’s house.”

Simeon says that the preparations for this child had been made in the sight of all people, or literally, “in front of the faces of all people.” Preparations were begun before the foundations of the earth were laid. A thousand years earlier, the Event Planner revealed that a descendant of King David would reign on his throne forever. Then, he issued a press release: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14). 700 years before Mary and Joseph met Simeon, the Event Planner’s publicist Micah announced that Bethlehem would be the site of the big event (Micah 5:2). The Event Planner does not procrastinate.

And when there are hiccups, he knows what to do. The virgin Isaiah mentioned did not live anywhere near Bethlehem. She was already well-along in her pregnancy, and her home was in another part of the country. Her new husband had a job in Nazareth, in Galilee, and they had no intention of going to Bethlehem. So how could the Event Planner make things turn out right? Even though he had an eternity to make plans, it seemed as if he had run out of time.

But the Event Planner never breaks a sweat. He has the resources of heaven at his disposal and the duration of eternity in which to work, and he has thought of everything. We see it in the incarnation. Mary is in Nazareth, with no reason on earth to go to Bethlehem. But then a man living 2,500 miles away, whom Mary knows almost nothing about (and who certainly never heard of her), speaks a few words in a conference room. “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.” That was all it took to get Mary to Bethlehem. Does the Event Planner know what he’s doing, or not?

George Balanchine, watch and learn! The Master brought it all together, and he used steps in the choreography that others would never have thought of—would have said were impossible. But then he not only plans, he also has the resources to work “out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will” (Ephesians 1:11).

The Event Planner uses the skills displayed in the incarnation in our lives too. He is able to make all things (and people, including us) co-labor with him in bringing good for his children. Christmas is the proof that he “is able … to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20, NLT).