Here’s an excerpt from God with Us: A Walk Through the Gospels. I especially thought it would be good to think about the “reason for the season” and hope you enjoy this.
In Love’s Disguise
Through waters of pain and blood
God’s blessings flood!
The Messiah’s birth, He’s come at last
But without a single trumpet blast
In answer to our deepest longing
He slips into our world disarming
All that keeps us far from Him
He’s come to annihilate our sin
Can He smell the beasts and dung?
Or know His angels have just sung?
Did He hear Eve’s groans of pain?
And feel the shock of air like icy rain?
God with skin, so velvet soft—
Is scratched by straw and bound by cloth
The curse of Eden forgotten by joy;
in this wonderful, tiny, baby boy
In awe the angels’ Maker now—
fills tiny lungs—and, so, they bow
They tremble at His needy cry—
for this is none but El Shaddai
Eternity and Time meet as one—
The Ancient of Days is Mary’s son
To our breast we bring Him near—
and hold Him close, so very dear
Creator of Life is in our care;
for our pain He too will share
For since the days of the Fall,
None has seen God’s face at all
Now in the manger crude He lies
Wrapped in Love’s disguise
Expectant after Gabriel’s visit, Mary awaits The Promise. For nine months, her hopes grow with the holy Seed within. Can she understand this mystery? She’s never known a man. Her child, the angel said, was God’s only begotten Son—the one of whom the prophets wrote:
“For unto us a Child is given;And the government will be upon His shoulder.And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end. Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.”
Here is an ancient prophecy from Micah:
But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to Me the One to be Ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting.’”
WONDER JUST A LITTLE
Let this sink in. Almighty God became an embryo, grew into a baby boy, grew into a youth, grew into a man. He was like each and every one of us. We take this for granted because we really can’t grasp this wonder. Let’s ask ourselves a few questions. Why did God choose to come to earth as a baby? Why did he become a vulnerable, needy, baby boy? He could have visited the earth as a man as he had done before. What motivated him to do this? What purpose did it serve that he became one of us—including the need to cut teeth, learn to crawl, walk, and talk? He grew in wisdom—which means he learned.
Can you imagine the Word of God eventually picking up words of Aramaic in order to speak? He is wisdom itself! By his Word, all things exist.
Can you see his parents’ delight in their toddler’s first steps? Imagine, the engineer of the universe toddled. It’s simply too overwhelming to comprehend.
This mystery of God’s incarnation is far too comfortable a notion in our minds. We are way too numb. Once in a while our hearts are awakened with wonder. A shock of truth makes its way through the layers of indifference. When Jesus walked on water, he shocked a few people. He did this after years of being an ordinary person, hidden in the ordinary lives around him. But Jesus was no ordinary human being. He was fully God as well as fully man. That is why he came the way he did. He wanted to be fully human.
We must ask another question. Why did he live that hidden, ordinary life for so long? Thirty years? What do these things tell us about God’s inner life—his heart—about his motives?
Is it possible God simply wanted to love and be loved? He wanted to be known, and he knew we couldn’t know him because he was too far above and removed from us. Did he want to be handled and held? Intimately known? There is something very tender about God’s desire to be loved in this way. Why did God desire to experience all that we experience?
Imagine what this meant to a simple carpenter named Joseph. The Lord of heaven and earth, as a baby, began a face-to-face, long-term, intimate relationship with him as “his son.” Vulnerable for the first time, God completely entrusted himself to the very creatures he made. Mary and Joseph were chosen for the most privileged roles of the Ages. How could an ordinary man, called to be an ordinary dad, be the “dad” to Divinity? How could a young woman bear the Creator in her womb?
Did Joseph and Mary know they held their own Maker when they held little Jesus? Did Joseph realize that when he taught Jesus how to work with his hands, that his son’s hands had made him? Did Mary and Joseph ever tremble at the scope of responsibility placed upon their shoulders? Perhaps Jesus’ full identity remained a mystery to them during his life. If they could have fully comprehended the truth, they couldn’t have raised Jesus as a normal child.
Yet this great mystery—the earthly life and mission of Jesus—was the drastic means God took, the tremendous lengths he went to, to bring “Eden” life to us. Eden means delight.
How God longs for intimacy with us. He couldn’t give any more of himself than he did in the way he came to us, and he couldn’t have better proved his love to us than in the way he showed it to us. Now we know God’s unrelenting, surpassing, surprising, everlasting love.
Merry Christmas.