I don’t follow Jesus because I think Christianity is the best religion. I follow Jesus because he leads me into ultimate reality. He teaches me to live in tune with how reality is.

– Rob Bell

From the message at church this morning:

“Other religions are instructions with a story sprinkled in, Christianity is a story with instructions sprinkled in”

OK, so that’s not necessarily true for entire books of the old testament.  But it is true for the gospel.  Christ teaches in parables so we can understand the subversive spiritual truths he is trying to get across to us … and God teaches in a story about Christ so we can understand the true nature of God — infinite redemptive love for his children.

We are a living incompleteness.  We are a gap, an emptyness that calls for fulfillment.

- Thomas Merton

I love the term “a living incompleteness.”  Understanding that, feeling that, is the first step …

A Christmas message written by my friend Jim Hays:

And Still He Came

I’ve been thinking about Christmas a lot recently—the first Christmas—not the red and green, frenetic period we all get caught up in; you know, the one that seems to start earlier and earlier in the stores every year.

This year my thoughts of the first Christmas turned more specifically to Mary. I was thinking about her just holding her newborn son. And I was transported in my thoughts back to a time when I was able to hold my own, infant children.

I used to love to nuzzle them. Their skin was so soft and smooth. I would kiss their foreheads, brushing my lips across that smooth skin and marveling in its softness, its seeming perfection.

I would play with their hands. I would pretend to nibble on their fingers. If I had not shaved, I would rub the palms of their hands against the grain of my beard. Their eyes would go wide with the sudden experience of a whole new sensation, and then they’d gurgle and giggle.

I would nuzzle their feet, holding the soft, pink soles up to my face while they would try to wiggle and kick those little feet.

And I remembered how not one of my children escaped my placing my face against their tummy and blowing—making that funny, flapping noise. It would always make them laugh hysterically—that funny, sometimes throaty laugh of an infant.

And then I was thinking about Mary again. I was wondering if she didn’t do many of those same things to her baby, the one whom the angel told her to name Jesus. With the awe and wonder of any new parent, Mary probably caressed and nuzzled and touched and kissed her newborn. I could picture her doing the same things that I did with my own children.

And then it struck me. As Mary kissed Jesus’ brow, she had no clue that the skin that now seemed so perfect would one day be gouged and bloodied by a crown of thorns. Mary did not, could not, know. But God did.

God knew that He would have to come. He would have to not only bear the curse for humanity to the Cross, but He would have to wear the curse as well. The thorns that were the symbol of the curse to the first Adam, would have to be worn by the second Adam, up the long hill to the Cross.

Mary did not know of any of this, but God did. And still He came.

As Mary kissed and nuzzled Jesus’ hands and feet, she had no idea that those hands and feet would one day be pierced. She had no way of knowing that they would be nailed through to a cross in a way that ensured the most painful death imaginable. But God knew.

God knew that the creativity and ingenuity He had placed within humankind (themselves the ultimate expression of His creation), the creativity and ingenuity that were dim reflections of His own, that very same creativity and ingenuity would be turned against Himself once He became veiled in flesh. Instead of using the gifts God had given them for soaring achievements to God’s own glory, humans would instead use them to inflict the cruelest torture they could devise upon each other, and upon Christ.

Mary did not know any of this, but God did. And still He came.

As Mary blew onto Jesus’ tummy, making Him laugh and laugh, she could not possibly know that one day her grown Son’s side would be run through with a Roman spear. Mary did not know, but God did.

God knew that He would one day have to rely on the hypocritical haste of the Sanhedrin to observe the Sabbath and the laziness of a Roman soldier to avoid the effort of having to sledgehammer Jesus legs. God would use those events to plainly prove His own death, in order to ensure that the full power and glory and hope that lie in His Resurrection would be undimmed for every believer and undoubted by all but the most hard-hearted.

Mary did not know—did not even imagine—any of this, but God did. And still, still He came.

He came, leaving His rightful throne, giving up the perquisites of deity, taking on all the limitations of humanity, just so He could also take up all our infirmities. He came, in a moment so inspiring to the heavenly host who understood its magnitude that they buffeted the world with their praise. And He came, knowing full well why He had come, and where He was headed. And still He came.

He came to a world that had long lain in sin, and in error, pining for Him.
He came, that each might have the thrill of hope in Him.
He came, and my soul does indeed feel its worth.
He came, and I am in wonder.