I’m sure there are lots of posts today being Christmas and all so I thought I would join in… but maybe this will be a new way of seeing a familiar story.
2000 years ago a child was born. We sing a song about “what child is this?” Have you ever pondered that question on your own, from the depths of your innermost being? When we look at this child in a manger, what do we see?
What we should see is freedom. We should see a perfect human that shows us what freedom looks like. We should see the face of God in human form. That is who Jesus was and what He came to do. He came to set us free from our fears.
Our number one fear was God Himself. We fallen humans had carried sacrifice after sacrifice up the mountain to please the angry g.o.d. of our imaginations. We blamed this g.o.d. for the good and the bad. We tried to please this g.o.d. to get the good instead of the bad. We pursued all forms of worship and religious activities to appease this fictional sovereign g.o.d. We tried and tried to close a gap that didn’t exist. We tried to build bridges that weren’t needed. We tried and tried with more and more dead animals and burnt sheaves and spilled blood and dead children, to no avail. We still felt alone and isolated and forgotten and abandoned by a g.o.d. that we loved out of fear and obligation not out of intimacy and trust. We needed a savior. We needed something or someone solid and real and believable and recognizable. We needed Jesus.
When we see Jesus we should never see fear. We should see our Father in union with His Son. We should see the image of God in human form. We should see the ultimate, perfect manifestation of the God-man creature. We see a man who was born without any identity issues whatsoever. Jesus knew who He was and where He came from and Who He was in union with. Jesus never doubted His origins or His oneness with His Father. Jesus shows us God because He is one with God and He manifests God and He is from God. We see a man who knew who He was and what family He came from. He never had to ask the question “what child is this?” because He knew that He knew. He was intimately one with intimacy. He was lovingly joined to Love. He lived in a finite embrace with the infinite. He enjoyed the source of joy. He was in His Father and His Father was in Him.
When we look at the baby Jesus we should see ourselves. We should see a human form joined with the divine source of our lives. We should see a human who moves and has His being in God. We should see us. Jesus was the first or prototype of what we all have been from the beginning of humanity. Jesus was the first to appear as the perfect human to reveal the perfect human. Perfection is union. Perfection is oneness with Love. Perfection is a limited human joined to an unlimited God. Jesus reveals who we are. We are all that Jesus was in construction and form and manifestation. We are of the divine and empowered by the divine and joined to the divine. This is the answer for us when we ponder “what child is this?”
We are children of God before our parents were children. We were in Christ before we were in Adam before we were in our mom. You can trace your identity all the way back to the divine. Your origins are the same as Jesus. You are one with God just like Jesus. He said so. Jesus said that He is in His Father and we are in Him and He is in us. This was His good news to us. This was Him closing the gap for us. This was Jesus building that bridge over that fictional chasm we all feared. This was Jesus bringing us a revelation of our own origins.
So what is the problem? We all have an identity crisis. We all need faith to see way back. We all need faith to embrace what is already true. We all need faith to abide in what already exists. We all need peace to find our union with our creator. We all need grace to fall into the reality of our divine oneness with our Father. That faith is from God and is provided for by God and comes from deep within our innermost being. It starts with a thought or an inkling or a deep down “knowing.” When we get past our fear of a fictional g.o.d. we can fall into love with our one true God who is our creator and our Father. We can cling to those moments of “knowing” to fall deeper in love with Love. We can shed our false identities and our broken thinking and our irrational fears and our imaginary images of a mythological manipulator and embrace our Abba.
When we “see” the answer to “what child is this?” we are set free to be who we are intended to be. We are the answer to “what child is this?” If we ever doubt we can look to a little Hebrew baby 2000 years ago to know it is true. We can look in the mirror and see Jesus looking back. We can rest in our Abba and know our Father.
Yay God!
Lance
alancetotheheart 