I confess to a need in me to be important.
Of all the mirrors of self-awareness 2018 held up to my inner terrain, this was one of the most troubling. It seems that there is much work to be done in my soul here. It's difficult work and I don't like how it makes me all angsty.
But I am finding Christmas is good for what ails this soul right now.
Because I also confess to a restless fascination with the whole Christmas idea that God was born.
That He actually did that.
That He actually 'laid His glory by' as Wesley pens it in Mendelssohn's carol "Hark the Herald Angels Sing".
Mild, He does this.
The Incarnation.
The concept that the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe,
the King of Everything,
Sovereign Deity and Holy God
actually stepped down and contained Himself in our time and space,
actually wrapped Himself in human flesh
and entered our world in a messy, beautiful, intimate, humble miracle.
God puts aside god-ness to become like me.
How is that even a thing?
I am more inclined to push against my humanity to be something more. More in control. More significant. More listened to. I tend to grasp for, long for power and status. And it's so insidious in me that I don't even realize it until some of it is taken away and I feel afraid of the plain humanity I'm left with.
But not God.
God did not regard it a thing to be grasped, but He emptied Himself. All the way.
All the way to the gush of amniotic fluid and blood, and needing someone to wipe Him off and clear His mouth and nose so He could breathe. All the way to absolute vulnerability, and needing someone to wrap something warm around Him, and to nurse Him.
All that way.
He went all that way so I could be free of all the subtle and not-so-subtle insidiousness that still entangles me, these 61 Christmases of my life later, when I am undone again by my need to be important to which I confess.
Sweet Baby Jesus,
laying there without Your glory,
forgive me.
Work in me
until I want to be mild like You
more than anything else.
No comments:
Post a Comment