It’s that time of year when, amongst the unwrapping of gifts, we try wrapping our heads around the fact that God came to us as a baby. Emmanuel. “God with us”.
But can we take our minds even a little further on that journey of God making Himself small for us? Because, before he was a newborn, he was a fetus, before that an embryo. He went through the precise development during pregnancy, a process which He himself had created. He reduced Himself to splitting cells, to the incubation of the human womb. The God of the universe, the One who holds the world, encapsulated in a fist-sized organ.
God, who has everything at his disposal, gave all of that up when he put himself, as Jesus, into the care of an inexperienced teenage mother, putting his life in her hands. Entrusting himself to the human race, knowing that they would also be the ones who would ultimately reject and kill him.
Can you imagine?
What would inspire something so drastic, so seemingly ludicrous and wasteful? Why would someone endure such a drastic reduction that would end in death? What could possibly drive one to do the unthinkable for the unthankful?
Love.
Love in its most profound and pure form. The type of sacrificial love that would risk everything to prove itself. That would give everything even when it received nothing in return.
The kind of love that would invade our earth, our hearts, through the most vulnerable of ways. By becoming one of us from the very beginning of conception.
My mind is left boggled by the thought. My heart and soul left addled.
And so as I wrap and unwrap gifts, I will continue to try and rewrap my head around the great love that came for me in its tiniest form.
