Christmas Day: December 25, 2011
For me, the beauty of the Incarnation lies in what I think of as God’s desire to show us how much God loves and understands us completely, because God knows what it means to be human in the person of Jesus. If God is omnipotent, then God already knew what it meant to be human prior to Jesus’ birth, but until Jesus came, we didn’t realize that. With the arrival of God in the form of a person, we human beings were shown once and for all that God has experienced everything we experience: hunger, thirst, loneliness, affection for others, joy, sorrow, pain, death. So when we pray to God, our prayers are heard by Someone who has been where we are– who has struggled, who has laughed, who has cried and who has celebrated.
If we believe that our prayers, our heartfelt cries to God are actually heard by One who has gone through what we go through, I believe it makes a difference. We feel less alone in a world that sometimes seems hostile to us. We can trust that there is beauty and goodness in our lives as humans; otherwise, why would God have wanted to join us here?
And the wonderful thing is, God keeps coming back! God keeps reminding us God is here, with us, every time we celebrate the coming of Jesus. Each year when we anticipate Jesus’ birth in the season of Advent and mark his arrival on Christmas, he is born again. He is renewed in our hearts, in our lives, in our spirits, and there is reason to rejoice.
“And the word became flesh, and lived among us . . .”