The mysterious heart of the holiday.
As we’re entering the expansive horticultural conservatory at a popular Pennsylvania garden estate, I stop in my tracks. Above me arches a fascinating, twining cascade of thick vines and brightly colored ornamental balls. It is beautiful in itself – a contrast in substances. Plain and grand. Somber and joyful.
I cannot help but think this captures the amazing truth of Christmas more than the lavishly decorated trees and banks of poinsettias that wait for me inside.
God became man. We should never become blasé about that truth. It should always unsettle us in the sense that we cannot wrap our minds around it. Both the how and the why of it are incomprehensible, except in the context of his defining love.
Paul shares one of the earliest hymns with us in Philippians 2, and it’s essentially about the marvel of the Incarnation:
who, being in the form of God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped.
But He emptied Himself,
taking upon Himself the form of a servant,
and was made in the likeness of men. Philippians 2:6-7
He emptied himself yet remained God. Jesus walked on this earth as fully God while being fully man. Athanasius (298-374) fleshes it out a bit for us: “…this is the wonder—as Man He was living a human life, and as Word He was sustaining the life of the universe, and as Son He was in constant union with the Father.”
Again, I cannot comprehend how this works. How did Jesus sustain all things while he was lying as a helpless baby in Mary’s arms? But that is a distraction. Whether or not I can explain it, the essential truth of God becoming man is lifechanging.
I come so close to the spiraling vine that I can see my reflection in the ornaments. It’s a good reminder that this staggering truth should impact my life. His love for me drove him to take on flesh as surely as my sins sent him to take up the cross.
God wants to transform me through this. Athanasius teaches that Jesus’s purpose in coming to earth was that I, and you, may see the “Image Absolute” and “through Him to apprehend the Father; which knowledge of their Maker is for men the only really happy and blessed life.”
Before I leave, I see the sun setting gloriously behind a small stand of plane trees. When I walk over, I find that, positioned just right, I can catch the sun in a small gap between two, making it seem like they have fused together and a radiant light streams from the heart of it – one tree, yet still two.
It’s yet another reminder of this mysterious truth — that fills me with amazement. And praise.
Thou who art God beyond all praising,
All for love’s sake becamest man;
Stooping so low, but sinners raising
Heavenwards by thine eternal plan.
Thou who art God beyond all praising,
All for love’s sake becamest man.
Reader: What has brought home the wonder of the Incarnation for you this season?
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