We just completed our week of prayer at church. It is a nice lead up to Advent for me. I like the season of Advent. I like to ponder everything that went on as the world got ready to receive this gift of a Saviour. I guess most of those involved had no idea what was really coming. I mean, how does a virginal young woman begin to understand what it is going to be like for her? She had to deal with rejection, with misunderstanding, with judgement. So did Joseph and he was only a surrogate father. I wonder how many times he was tempted to get rid of this blight on his character. The two of them certainly needed an angel visitation. What people of trust in God they must have been.
And God himself – I wonder sometimes at the immensity of the risk he was taking. Was the outcome certain? I guess God could see it all outside of our time shell.
When I read passages like Philippians I am provoked to wonder at just how much of the outcome of this whole plan was a done deal. Jesus chose to become human – fully human. Does this not involve some free will on his part as well? What if in the garden as he was agonizing over his own death he had not chosen in our favor? To be obediant to death – for us – demanded total obedience. Jesus was human. The total obedience part for me is so hard. Was it hard to go all the way for the one to whom I owe everything?
Maybe this seems like a strange kind of thought sequence. I have never really though about the gift we were given in these terms before – in terms of what it really meant to Jesus to live that life of complete obedience and at the same time to be as human as I am. That thought to me is almost overpowering. And it makes me wonder if the whole incarnation didn’t involve a great risk and great sacrifice on the part of God for us the creatures he brought into being.
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