Healing Rays of Righteousness

For the past few weeks, we focused our thoughts on God’s coming down to us and being near to us as “Emmanuel,” God with us. On Christmas Eve we remembered and celebrated the angels announcement of Jesus’ birth to the shepherds; “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.” 

But within the next few days, we begin to take down the Christmas lights and decorations and move back into our daily routines.  Soon thoughts of Christ’s birth into our world seem more distant and often discarded with the used wrapping paper or boxed up with the nativity scene to be brought out again next Christmas.  Soon God is once again sent back into the heavens, no longer the Word made flesh; no longer the Word that dwells among us, full of grace and truth; no longer the ever-present Lord in our midst.

Over the next several days weeks we may be asked, “What did you get for Christmas?”  For me, the answer would be, “I got a Savior, and he is with me, down here in my world.”  And, I hope to be more intentional in claiming and living this reality as I move beyond the celebration of Jesus’ birth and prepare to enter into the new year of 2019.

In her book, At Home in Mitford, Jan Karon writes of a time when Father Tim, an Episcopal priest, heard a horrible scream from the sanctuary of his church.  As he came closer, he began to understand the anguished words that made up the scream:  “Are…you…up…there?”

And Jan writes, “Father Tim slid into the pew across the aisle and knelt on the worn cushion.  “You may be asking the wrong question,” he said quietly.  Startled, the man raised his head.  “I believe the question you may want to ask is not, ‘Are you up there?’ but, ‘Are you down here?’”  

Before Jesus was born, God would visit His people by performing mighty and miraculous works.  Whenever He made such visits, God’s people would stack stones or build a monument or erect a synagogue in honor of God’s visit.  The physical erection of monuments and buildings was their way of saying, God was here.  The power and presence of God had visited them in a place, and so in order not to forget the event, they constructed a reminder.

But when Jesus entered the world the verb tense changed from the past to the present tense, from “was” to “is.”   Jesus stepped down out of heaven and made His dwelling place among us.  He moved into our neighborhood.  He took up residence on this planet so we could better understand and know God.  His Spirit lives within us, giving us life and light and love.

John’s Gospel tells us that the Word was made flesh and made his dwelling among us.  This Word, the Word that was at the beginning, the Word that was with God, the Word that was God, became something we can grasp and understand.

Jesus Christ, the Word, certainly is “up there,” but we must never forget that he is also “down here.”  Because of Jesus’ birth, who is the incarnation of God, we now say, “God is here.”  In Jesus, God “… became flesh and made his dwelling among us.  We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14).  In Jesus, God came into our world and into our every day, mundane things of life.

In his act of becoming human, God experienced and shared in the pains of human life on earth.  He felt the pain of loneliness, the hurt of rejection.  He felt the pain of grief in losing a loved one to death.  He felt the pain of mental and physical abuse.  And so, he understands and empathizes with us completely, feeling our pain.  God is here – he feels, he hurts, and he cries.

We may often think of God as being up there – far removed from the cares and concerns of this world.  But, the good news truth is that knowing we could never reach him in heaven, and because he so greatly loves us, God became human in Jesus and came down to live among us.

Pray with me:  “Be near me, Lord Jesus; I ask Thee to stay   Close by me forever, and love me, I pray. Bless all the dear children in Thy tender care,   And fit us for heaven, to live with Thee there.”

“Healing Rays of Righteousness” – December 26, 2018