A Thought For The Week Of December 18, 2017

"This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” (Luke 2:12) With Christmas fast approaching, I find my attention drawn ever closer to the incarnation - its meaning, its purpose and its implications. A line from C.S. Lewis seemed appropriate: "The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby." That's rather mind-boggling. The Supreme and Almighty God came to us in as vulnerable a way as possible: as "a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger." Babies are completely dependent on others; and completely vulnerable to those who would harm them. And yet, that is how God came. That picture of incarnation says two things to me. First, that God - having been vulnerable - understands what it is to be vulnerable. Those who are the vulnerable among us (and any of us might be vulnerable at any given moments - and some may always be vulnerable due to their circumstances) are not alone. God who was vulnerable understands the vulnerable and stands with them. Far from being abandoned - they are loved, perhaps in a specially intimate way because God has shared this condition. Second, this reminds me that God calls upon we who are able to look out for the vulnerable: to accept and welcome them; to protect them and their rights; to stand up when systems or society abuses them or tries to cast them aside. Jesus said that "whatever you do for the least of these you do for me." By "the least of these" Jesus was in fact speaking of the extremely vulnerable of our society. When we stand for them we stand for Jesus - because Jesus was one of them. Incarnation - that God took on human flesh - is especially important to my own understanding of the Gospel. Understanding the vulnerability that Jesus experienced through the incarnation reminds me of what my purpose as a Christian is - to be a voice for those whose voices are silenced, and to look out for those who through no fault of their own cannot look out for themselves, or at least who need help to do so.