Beloved C.J. Blog Readers,
I have been out of sync for the past few weeks recovering from a back injury - two marvelously herniated discs. I have completed a lot of floor time and have not had quite enough energy, enthusiasm or focus to really put together my normal Christmas letter. My apologies for that. (Although it might have been quite entertaining to see what I would have had to say with the admixture of Holy Spirit, Oydcodone & Valium. Sadly, we will never know). I do have a backload of blogs that I have been sketching out and will begin 2010 trying to coordinate them with what I will be teaching at our Simple Church gatherings. So...stay tuned.
I am doing much, much better. Through this ordeal, I have gained a new found compassion for people who are suffering from chronic pain. The Scriptures teach that faith operates through love and I believe that compassion and love are synonymous. Many times, as a set-up for Jesus healing a person of a particular affliction, the Scripture begins with this phrase: "And, moved with compassion, He..." You know the rest. He healed them. Hopefully my prayers for people in 2010 will be of a better quality as I am now stripped of the base alloy of feigned compassion. I get it now.
So...Merry Christmas! It is a big deal - this God stepping out of eternity into time and entering our atmosphere through the portal of a Palestinian shed. God became a man and dwelt among us - so says the gospel writer, John. It is mind-bending. How could God be here and still be "there?" That question - actually that reality - was demonstrated by physics in the famous "Bucky-ball" experiment in Germany. Scientists witnessed for the first time a single electron appearing in two dimensions at the same moment in time. It was, and is, freakish. But, Scripture pre-dated that experiment by 2,000 years. God became a man and dwelt among us. I can't quite get my mind around that and I can't quite get over it. A brief meditation on the wonder of that event still moves me at the deepest level...
...And even more so because we humans are so puny and so transient. In our galaxy, the largest star known to exist goes by the name of VY Canis Majoris (Big Dog). It is referred to as a Red Hyper-Giant. There is some debate about its size, but some estimates say that the circumference of this star is over 5 billion miles. It would take an object traveling at light speed, 8 hours + to navigate the circumference. For our own sun, the light speed trip would take only 14.8 seconds. 7 quadrillion of our earths would be necessary to fill up the Big Dog. And that is just one star in the 100 plus billion stars in our galaxy. And...there are at least 100 billion galaxies in the universe. I read somewhere that there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on the earth. Crazy - ridiculous - awesome - amazing and....humbling.
Christmas humbles me because I believe that God created the whole thing. I really do. And, it seems that He did His creating with extravagant excess. Even on this earth, the variety of trees, fruits, plants, dogs, people, insects, climates, fish, etc. boggles the mind. Why? Why so much variety? Why such a big universe? When I measure it all against the advent of the Christ-child - this special intervention from heaven for this mere speck in the universe overloads my emotions. Why this planet? Why are we so special? One errant asteroid could remove this headache of a planet peopled with a maddened human race set on its own destruction. But no - God decided to insert Himself onto the scene as "one of us." He got to experience for the very first time what it was like to see, smell, hear, taste, sweat, be thirsty, be tempted and to suffer - just like all of us "blokes down under." This planet - this one grain of sand in the vast wilderness of the universe gained the affection of the Creator.
But more mind-bending than that is the fact that He didn’t live and then die for mankind, as such…He lived and died and rose again for individuals – for people with real names, real birthdates, and with unique finger-prints. He died for me. He died for you. The Creator of all this excessive majesty came to this earth to establish contact with one person at a time.
If there wasn’t something truthful and real surrounding this event 2,000 years ago – it would have long ago dissipated from the memory of man. But, somehow, this child has repeated this “Bethlehem” – this great invasion - time and time again throughout these many centuries - being born anew into the willing hearts of men, women and children. He who was born, who lived, who suffered on the cross for our sins, and who rose again – lives on in believers from the inside out. A couple of billion people today who claim this mysterious relationship will pause and remember this great truth, that: “God became a man and dwelt among us…” The story never grows old because the story continues to skip from heart to heart and from generation to generation in its marvelous, organic iridescence. Wherever there is a needy heart that humbly cries out for help; for deliverance; for salvation; a Bethlehem occurs.
Be well blessed,
CJ
Christmas Day, 2009 A.D.
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