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I wonder if it really was a silent night?
When Mary’s belly clenched and there wasn’t a room and Joseph’s desperate heart lurched- looking for somewhere, anywhere, to lay His wife down. Because she was about to bring forth the Miracle the whole world had longed for, prayed for, waited for, and all of creation groaned with Mary as Heaven met earth
Even this messed up world knows how to make room for the birth of its Lord.
A thousand past and future generations with their eyes trained on this moment, a moment so important that we’ve used it to divide our timeline. There is only before and after it.
He was born, not God transformed, but God Incarnate. Fully God and fully man, a union
contained in a Triune God. The same Word of God who wove together the mysterious nucleus of an atom and the swirling patterns of the universe. The God who only wanted communion with us
He slid wet and warm into this young woman’s arms and into all the joy and wanting and pain and lack that this world has. How could there be any other hope for us?
The Second Person of the Trinity assumed our human nature and united it to Himself in an unbreakable bond that restores us, redeems us, receives us. So that He is Immanuel- God is with us, the Incarnation is the only way to a God-encounter, the only way to know Him.
Logos means Word and the Word, the same Word that in the beginning was with God and was God, He came and He became flesh.
In – caro is Latin for “into the flesh” and we didn’t just need a God of covenants and stone tablets, we needed a God of body and blood to trample death and tear the veil. The Word made flesh is God incarnate. What other kind of faith could there be?
He emptied Himself to be contained by us, contained in a womb, in a manger, in a tomb,
and in a broken human heart. And now the joy of all who sorrow, the thrill of hope for this weary world, is that when Heaven meets earth, the Agent of Creation becomes its salvation
That the unknowable, invisible, inexpressible Glory is contained in a Savior who hasn’t come to judge, but to gather us into His story of salvation.
God born to us. A God born from us. A God born for us. Has there ever been another miracle like it?
Augustine reminds us that delight happens, wonder unfurls when we can love and be loved in return. And so a weary world rejoices with silent nights and angel’s trumpets because what else do you do when you’ve been found?
So now that that which was invisible is seen, that which was unknowable is known, and the inexpressible has substance, now that He’s gone and done the coming and the living and the dying and the rising
So what do the wise men and women do now?
An Incarnate God embodied Himself into flesh, but He didn’t stop there. He embodied Himself into a body of believers whose only job it is to be His hands and feet to each other, to bring the body of Christ not just to church on Sundays, but to the lost and the least of these,
The patient waiters wondering if He’s forgotten their problems and the hopeless hard-hearted — broken down by the worst this world can think of but hardened hearts crack at Christmas because the world has always ached for Him. He didn’t come for glory or power, or for anything less than Love.
He carried our humanity and all that we were meant to be from Bethlehem to Jerusalem and isn’t that just like Him?
All the coming and living and dying and rising are only to enfold us back to Him. The God Immanuel, who came to be with us, asks us to carry Him and bear Him to everyone we meet.
And we can all exhale in relief and say that “the purpose of theology is just to bring Him closer to me”
We are now the Body of Christ. He lives in us and we are doing the living and the dying and the rising in His name. Because above all, the Incarnation is an invitation to love, and now that we’ve seen Him, who will ever be the same.
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