God With Us.
Every Christmas that thought just floats around in my brain, tickling things. It's too huge to grasp.
In the Old Testament, God was often with people in a tangible way. Like the cloud and the pillar of fire that accompanied Israel through the wilderness. The glory that descended upon the Ark of the Covenant and filled the temple. But, God was distant.
Moses knew Him. So did Abraham and David and many others. But most people only encountered him vicariously, through the priests and the system.
God wants more. He wants relationship with us.
(Here I have to try to explain God: He is self-sufficient and all powerful. His word alone created a universe that extends beyond our reckoning. We can't begin to understand His vastness. Just a glimpse of Him, or even one of His messengers sends a person into a dead faint.)
So, this Powerful God stepped off of His throne, removed His glorious robe, and slipped down into humanity. He shed His royalty to wear rags and be born in a building full of animal dung. He became insufficient. He was as dependent upon His mother as any other babe. Completely helpless. Completely empty, naked, vulnerable and human. I can't get over that.
And yet that is really only a small part of it. Because the much bigger part is that He left behind His place of Holiness and purity to come and walk around in sludge and sewage. He did not ever sin, but He was affected by it just as every human is. And He was affected by it as only God can be. He felt every sorrow we have ever felt. Rejection, ridicule, loss of loved ones, disappointment. Don't think that because He was God He was above the pain and misery.
God came to earth. He walked with us. Ate with us. Talked and laughed with us. Wept, anguished, and suffered with us.
Now we can know God. Have that relationship He longs for and we need. He came to clear the way and He left His Spirit here, so that God is and always will be with us. All because of that little Baby in a manger.
God became man. Get it?
Neither do I.
