Why Christ?

I’m presently reading “The Jesus I Never Knew” by Phillip Yancy. It is redefining who Jesus is to me…who he is to everyone. I’m seeing a new, different, real Jesus—God and human. Some of the adjectives Yancy uses to describe Jesus are as follows: humble, approachable, underdog, courageous. The courageous description fits a deity. Humble? Approachable? Underdog? These do not sound like a powerful, fiery Lord.

That’s kind of the point.

Here is another look at Christmas, the day God decided to come to earth as a baby. The how and the why…

“The God who came to earth came not in a raging whirlwind nor in a devouring fire. Unimaginable, the Maker of all things shrank down, down, down, so small as to become an ovum, a single fertilized egg barely visible to the naked eye, an egg that would divide and redivide until a fetus took shape, enlarging cell by cell inside a nervous teenager…”

“The Messiah who showed up, however, wore a different kind of glory, the glory of humility…the God who roared, who could order armies and empires about like pawns on a chessboard, this God emerged in Palestine as a baby who could not speak or eat solid food or control his bladder, who depended on a teenager for shelter, food and love.”

I’ve been doing some much needed “get to know you” time with the Lord, lately. Desperately, I’ve been searching Him for answers to some life questions I have and the answer I keep getting back is “do you know Me? Do you understand who I am?”

Yancy makes an excellent point about God: He’s scary.

The Old Testament times were ruled in fear. “Stories of the sacred mountain in the desert that proved fatal to everyone who touched it, mishandle the ark of the covenant and you died, enter the most Holy place and you’d never come out alive…”

God is too big for us to comprehend. If we see Him, we die. Yancy relayed a story about keeping a fish tank which I can relate to. He told about having to monitor nitrate levels and ammonia content, pumping in vitamins and filtering the water…all of this because he cared about his fish. “You would think, in view of all the energy expended on their behalf, that my fish would at least be grateful. Not so. Every time my shadow loomed above the tank they dove for cover into the nearest shell. They showed me one ‘emotion’ only: fear.” Can you imagine God showing up at your front door and asking to go for a walk and a little chat ‘bout last night at the bar? “To my fish I was deity. I was too large for them, my actions too incomprehensible. My acts of mercy they saw as cruelty; my attempts at healing they viewed as destruction. To change their perceptions, I began to see, would require a form of incarnation. I would have to become a fish and ‘speak’ to them I a language they could understand.”

So, God became human. “What can be less scary than a newborn with his limbs wrapped tight against his body? In Jesus, God found a way of relating to human beings that did not involve fear.”

Happy Christmas and if you’ve missed the point of the real gift, I pray your heart accepts it this coming year :)