Christmas 2009

It's almost time to head off to bed and say goodnight to Christmas 2009. It was a happy day but I missed having my oldest daughter and her husband and my little granddaughter here for Christmas with us. They are in South Africa for this Christmas season visiting his relatives there and celebrating his grandfolks anniversary.

So, their presence was greatly missed.

I managed to get out for a walk during the day and use it as my prayer time. Trying to understand the complexity of God becoming human will baffle me forever, but forever I will be grateful. I serve a God who is able to understand and feel the tension and sorrow that I feel and the joy and delight that I also experience. He is a God who is familiar with pain and suffering, temptation and distraction. And yet, he did not sin.

My hesitation to come close to a God who is so divine that he is unapproachable, somehow disappears when I think of him as a fellow human of flesh and blood, dirt and grime, and full of emotion. It is then that I draw him close to me - or perhaps, he draws himself close to me. Whatever the case, his presence is felt as a real live human being standing next to me - or so it seems. Suddenly, he enters my world. Experiences and feels what I feel and experience. Limits himself to the "smallness" of a human, then proceeds to embrace authentic crucifixion and death so I don't have to and all of this, to offer me the gift of salvation, a hope of eternal life, and a relationship with a God who will never abandon me.

There just isn't enough time to think this all through and understand the significance of the incarnation. But I must try. I must try, for it is in seeing God as "human", that I see him as "Divine".