My words for pondering, praying, pouring over, and pursuing this year are “incarnation” and “calm.”. It seems the two are intertwined in my mind.
God had been impressing the word “incarnation” on my heart throughout Advent and Christmastide. I thought I understood it…… Perhaps not.
When I read Beth Felker Jones’ Church Blogmatics’ post from Christmas Eve a year ago right after the first of this year as she reposted it, I knew it was deeper and there was more to learn. Here is an excerpt from her blog…
“Incarnation isn’t God letting us out of the ordinary and into glory. It’s the truth that ordinary is glory because God is here with us.
God embraces our flesh.
God made the ordinary. Loves the ordinary. Is bringing the ordinary into the kingdom that is glory all round.
Love holds our petty, restless anger, and love holds our deepest sorrow. It invites us to bring them to the Son of God.
Because Jesus isn’t partly human and partly divine. He’s all of God and all of us, in the one little person whose head Mary kissed as she held him close and inhaled his impossible, earthy newborn smell.
He’s completely God and completely human.
Fully able to handle all our pain as only God can do.
Fully here with us, in that pain, so that we know how much he loves us. God and human in body and soul.
Glories stream from heaven.
Alleluia . Come, Lord Jesus”. (Church Blogmatics)
“Incarnation” and “calm”…..
Our Titus ladies and I are using E. Stanley Jones’ devotional work entitled “In Christ,” exploring what it means to BE “IN CHRIST.”. Incarnation has captured my attention through many references in recent weeks.
Josh Leroy writing in the Advent devotional book “Protagonist” that we used this year, references a lofty “otherly” view of God that many hold. I have referred to that as a “transcendent” view of God that places Him beyond man’s reach and understanding. Too many have that view of God but it is that kind of thinking that results in us holding God at a distance and limiting what He can do in and through us.
In the incarnation through Jesus’ birth God made Himself accessible, available and imminent (defined as “near by” or “impending”) to humankind.
By the gift of the Holy Spirit through faith in Jesus Christ God has made Himself available in a personally intimate way. When we receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit by incarnating Him throughout our own spirit, soul, and body, surrendering to God’s fulfilment of His will and plan for our life and purpose in and through us, we have become as close to Christ and Christ-likeness as is possible for humankind, in my understanding, until such time as eternal new-being is made complete in afterlife abiding.
The more incarnationally I live, by the constant awareness of the Holy Spirit presence, the more at peace, calm even in the midst of storms, I will be.
Hence…….”incarnation” and “calm” for 2024.
1/1/24- Josh Leroy in The Wake Up Call at Seedbed.com.
JOHN 1:14–18 (NIV)
The Word 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 testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”) Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.
CONSIDER THIS
I’m not sure that we would have much of a philosophy of the incarnation were it not for the first chapter of John. This idea of God revealing himself through a human vessel is really quite radical. Our inclination is often to view God as distant; far removed from the intricate details of his creation. The reality of the incarnation as it is expressed through John speaks a much better word.
Saint Athanasius must have had the words of John resonating within his mind when he wrote his classic work On the Incarnation of the Word. In my view, Athanasius gives the most profound and concise explanation of the incarnation when he says, “God became what we are, so that we might become what he is.” This is a simple explication of the Orthodox notion of theosis, which is the process by which we become like God by way of union with him. We can be made like God in character. Through the experience of union with him, we can come to love what he loves. His values become our values and his opinions become our opinions. Jesus shows what it looks like for a human to be perfectly united with the Source—living with God in an unbroken bond of intimacy that cannot help but produce a lifestyle of radical obedience. Shockingly, Jesus invites us into this same reality. He invites us into union. When we surrender to Jesus and become possessed by his Spirit, we too become incarnations. I believe this is what is implied in 2 Peter 1:4, where we are encouraged to “participate in the divine nature.” He became what we are, that we might become what he is. I would add . . . if we never get around to becoming what he is, then there was really no point in him becoming what we are.
THE PRAYER
Creator and Sustainer of all that is, thank you for shining your light so brightly through Jesus. May his intimacy with you become our intimacy with you. May your thoughts become our thoughts, and may your ways become our ways.
THE QUESTION
Do you desire to move more deeply into this unbroken union with God? What barriers hinder this lifestyle of radical obedience?
For the Awakening,
Josh LeRoy