“Mary took the long narrow strips of fresh cloth and began wrapping the Baby like a little mummy. Usually, the mother of a newborn wrapped the child to protect their weak limbs and hold in body heat. This would be important on this chilly evening. She wrapped Him as if each bandage was a part of her heart. She wrapped till He was wrapped in both cloth and her love. In that moment she did not think about how this Child was Yahweh wrapped in humanity. Right now He was just her newborn son.” – from The Via Advent, Chapter 28, Clothed
Incarnation is a concept I cannot wrap my mind around. It is the greatest Mystery of creation revealed but incomprehensible in scope. We read about the gods visiting the planet shrouded in the form of some animal or human. But to become human and play by our rules seems terrifying (to me)? The Author willingly enters the story He wrote but not as a rich noble or beefy hero. He is quietly born, behind enemy lines, as a scrub, a nobody, a man of the dust. There is nothing remarkable from his outer appearance. No political power agenda. No sudden pulling back of the curtain while He’s alive. (The curtain did get pulled away at the moment of His death).
Don’t get me wrong. I understand that great men have risen from obscurity throughout the history of mankind. But no one proclaimed Himself God — and rose from the dead to prove it. All I know in my life is that I suddenly (on June 23, 1985) had the ability to relate to God in a way unbeknownst to me in my first 17 years of life. The living God, the Incarnate One, wrapped me in His divinity in the same way He wrapped Himself in humanity. The God who dwelt in skin and bones once again dwells in skin in bones in all who call Him Lord.
Take a moment to stop and think upon the Baby in the manger.
