When the Incarnation Gets Personal – Michael Frack

Please follow and like us:
fb-share-icon
Tweet

The thing about Christmas and the Incarnation that every now and then breaks through my stoic emotional defenses and leaves me blubbering like a child, is that God, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, who sits on the Throne above every Throne, loves not just the human race in general, but loves me, cares enough for me, that he took on my flesh and my frame and came to be like me – that he came to know my suffering, and my darkness, and my pain – and that he came to be rejected as I am rejected. That he came into my mess to make his home in my despair, to live his life in the places where I can only see pain and death.

That he came to take the very worst of my world—not to further burden me with the crushing shame of my failure, but to take my pain and fear and sorrow into himself, to experience them more fully even than I do—and to calm them. He takes my shame into himself, only to give to me in return his hope and peace and rest.

What gets me breaking down is that, in a world where it seems everyone is quick to pounce on my every failure or incompetence, as if my very existence were an insult to them and a blight on the creation itself—he sees my mess, bare and hopeless and exhausted before him. And where others would take the opportunity to blast me deeper still into the pit of despair and remorse, he says—

Nothing.

Only, he looks at me with eyes full of love and pain. For my pain has become his pain. And silently he tells me:

“I know.”