journey onWord with us

Today we officially enter the season of Advent.  A season where we will, once again, use the four Sundays preceding Christmas Day to turn our gaze intentionally toward the Nativity.  It is our prayerful desire to turn down the noise of the season and expectantly walk in the direction of Jesus.  We’ll consider Him as a baby, as a boy, as a King and as our Savior.  We’ll tell the story of His birth, life and death from unique angles and different perspectives.  Come join us on a journey to the Nativity.

An unlikely couple nears the end of a long and arduous walk.  They’ve traveled almost seventy miles to the husband’s hometown to be counted in a census.  The young wife is barely a teenager and her precious baby boy is nearly full term.  In a matter of hours they’ll be turned away from place after place, as the God of the Universe directs their steps to a humble and crude cradle in which to lay his only Son.

As the husband struggles to make his bride comfortable, her contractions begin.  She squeezes his hand as the pain peaks.  She looks into his eyes for reassurance, and mimics the pattern of his breathing.   There is no one else to pat her head with a cool compress, no one else to offer her words of comfort.  She labors and he prays.  That process repeats for what seems like hours.  Then, all at once, the pain reaches its upper register and she pushes with every bit of strength she has left.  The only sinless man to ever live enters the world that desperately needs Him.  His first cries pierce the darkness.  The new father wraps his baby boy in the few remnants of cloth they have and lays the Savior of the world onto his wife’s chest.

Is this how it went?  I have only ventured a guess.  There is precious little scripture which tells the story of that sacred trip and holy night.  Precious little scripture which corroborates either a silent night or one closer to the type every other earthly mother experiences.  But here is my point … I believe the experience of the Nativity was fully human as much as it was fully God.  I do not believe God interrupted or co-opted the human to replace it with the divine.  I believe He knit them together in the same way Jesus was fully both.

The pain of childbirth, the sounds of a newborn baby, the joy of holding Him, and the very real fear of “Now what?!” … this fully human experience expands the story for me.  It rings true with a God who chose for his Son to experience the full breadth of us and how we enter the world and navigate through it.  To me, an all-was-not-calm night shouts, “Immanuel!  God with us!”   That is anything but silent, but entirely Holy.  God chose a plan of redemption that had as its cornerstone, a fully human Savior.  Jesus, Immanuel, Prince of Peace, a baby boy not conceived like any other, but born exactly like every other.

Jesus as a baby.  A very real, flesh and blood baby.  Fully one of us and fully Him, sent to be the only perfect sacrifice for our sin.

If you already know Jesus personally, may this first step on our journey stir expectancy in your heart and soul.  May it orient you toward the Nativity and begin preparing your heart for a right and proper celebration.  If you have never met Jesus, today is the day to be introduced.  We would love to talk to you and share the good news of who He is and what He has done for you.  Don’t wait another week, another day, another moment.