November 2019

Carolyn and I enjoyed an early Thanksgiving dinner with family this past Sunday before heading to the mountains to celebrate Thanksgiving Day by decorating our cabin as we anticipate the beginning of Advent.

I believe the greatest miracle of all time was Jesus’ birth: God Almighty willingly choosing to become God incarnate, God in the flesh. The Lord of the Universe, as a vulnerable babe, entered into the struggles of humankind at a tumultuous time and in a nondescript place. The God of heaven “made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Philippians 2:7), and in so doing chose willingly to humble himself as a “down-to-earth” God.

Frankly, if God had chosen to be just “Our Father who art in heaven,” if we had never experienced God with skin on in the person of Jesus, then God might always have remained an ethereal concept. Encountering a God who looks and acts like Jesus is an entirely different proposition. In Jesus, we have the picture of a God who intentionally positions himself as a mere servant, identifying with the lowest of lows, the least, and the lost. As the Son of God, Jesus is the antithesis of the spoiled, prideful and cruelly powerful prince of Greek mythology or fairy-tale lore who willfully acts on personal whims for selfish gain. Instead Jesus, the down-to-earth God, demonstrates in the flesh and to the full the love, humility, obedience and sacrificial lifestyle that we as Jesus’ followers are in turn called to live out and embrace.