All So Human
December 23, 2008 § 2 Comments
Our first Christmas Eve Candlelighting service is less than 24 hours away – I’m glad. For me these services are the sweetest of the year. We come together as a community and celebrate a birth. It is all so human. This particular Christmas season I am struck by this reality – perhaps more than any other in recent memory. Jesus became one of us.
For some reason I am seeing everything through this prism this December. Even my own pain and sorrows are meant for something more than what they are, in and of themselves – they remind me that I am connected to every individual on this planet who shares the wounds of the Fall. Those who suffer have a brother in this sufferer. Our pain is not exactly the same – but it is every bit as human. We are inextricably linked in our humanity.
To think that Jesus entered into this mess is mind-boggling. A part of me wants to say that He shouldn’t have – in the same way my parents once (many years ago) stopped me from jumping between two people fighting on US-1 in Miami around midnight on New Year’s Eve. Something in me doesn’t want Jesus soiled with my mess. I don’t want to share what I am ashamed of.
Perhaps a better way of putting it is that He didn’t have to.
But He did.
I know He was born to die. We tell the ‘die’ part every time we speak the Gospel. But tonight, with Christmas Eve within reach, my heart is full with joy and thanksgiving for the ‘born’ part.
Jesus was Born. This is the Christmas Story. This is Good News.
peace.
unfinished1 
If I am following your train of thought correctly, our suffering and humanity inextricably links us to each other; it also inextricably links us to Christ because he entered our world as one of us…it’s amazing.
Exactly, Lauren – We are connected to one another and to Christ – The call to Justice (particularly in the OT) flows out of that reality (Jeremiah 29:7).
In the New Heavens and the New Earth things will be as they were intended – all suffering will end and no one will be alone in their Joy.
In the mean time we are called to embrace the Gospel by weeping over the sorrows of a broken world. In doing so we embrace Jesus Himself (Matthew 25) and our own suffering is given meaning.
Merry Christmas