Fear Not

Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

--Isaiah 43:19

And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

--Luke 2:10-11

The Christmas story is not a children’s tale about a baby born in a stable and laid in a manger. It is not something to ponder whimsically once a year and then forget about like the piles of torn-up wrapping paper in the trash. The Christmas story began before people existed and is still happening today. It is the story of a God who became one of us so that He could rescue us out of darkness, so that we might become heirs along with Him, as sons and daughters, in a kingdom we cannot, even with the farthest reaches of our intellect, imagine or understand.

If you feel like that’s hard to comprehend, it’s probably because it is. Frankly, it’s a lot easier to just eat cookies and wrap presents than to sit here and try to put into words a story that cannot really be put into words.  After a hiatus from writing for a month or so, during which God has been working with me on a lot of things (stay tuned for later posts!), I find myself suddenly two days out from Christmas, wrestling with the idea of incarnation—a spirit becoming flesh.

The first being to become flesh was Adam. God made him out of dust. He breathed the spirit of life into Adam’s flesh through His own nostrils. Then He took part of Adam’s flesh—his rib—and created Eve, Adam’s bride. They were spiritually and physically one flesh. Adam said, “‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’ Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:22).

In the beginning, flesh was something beautiful. It was uncorrupted. It was only a vessel in which a spirit could live. But then something happened. The flesh got control. Through their mouths, Adam and Eve ingested sin. They didn’t believe God’s Word—that the fruit of the tree would bring death. Their flesh had never seen death and couldn’t even conceptualize what it was.

But when death entered the earth, it spread and formed this earth that we know now, in which death is the constant and life the anomaly. Now, humanity’s flesh causes its spirit to die a little more every single day, instead of its spirit giving life to its flesh. How backwards it all became.

God loved humanity. He wasn’t going to give up on the horror His creation had become. So how was He to restore what was lost?

He said, “I will become flesh. I will come down there, and I will re-do the marriage.”

When I was little, we had this picture book about a little girl and her relationship with God. All the illustrations were done in soft pastels, and everything seemed to be surrounded by this faint glowing light. Jesus was a tall yet unintimidating figure with a very demure beard and a kind face, clothed in a soft robe with a blue sash.

When I pray, to this day, I see that image of God from the picture book: Jesus all haloed and robed in pastels and looking like he stole his beard from 1967. This is embarrassing for me to admit. You’d think I would have outgrown this by now. But humans are visual; we need images. That’s probably why the Israelites kept returning to images of Baal. They wanted something to look at, something to identify with. I think our culture often does us a disservice by instilling these images in our minds—a little blonde baby in a manger, a whimsical floating angel choir, a cartoon Jesus breaking cartoon bread—so that our images of Him are reduced to what we can imagine.

I’m not saying we should take all the Bible story coloring pages away from our kids. What I’m saying is that we should stop looking at the Incarnation from the perspective of children’s storybook pages and begin to conceptualize it as the great cosmic narrative that it is.

Maybe you already do. I do, when those moments of wonder hit me. It’s just that my mind, and my blind human eyeballs, tend to be my downfall. I sometimes find it frustrating that God is impossible to illustrate. Every time the Old Testament writers attempt to describe what they’ve seen, they always have to say, “It was like this….,” comparing their visions of God with things that were familiar but pathetically inadequate to illustrate His glory. (See Ezekiel if you want to read some weird descriptions.)  I feel like I am constantly trying to draw a picture of God for myself with chalk pastels, and all I am doing is getting the dust all over my hands and smudging the paper.

John tried his best to put the mystery of the story into words and came up with some of the most perplexing, beautiful, and wonderful verses in the Bible:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

—John 1:1-5

God is not an image. Jesus is the force through which we see all images: He is light.

Yet, He became flesh, became something to see and touch and feel, so that He could be Immanuel: God with us.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.—John 1:14

He came down here and experienced flesh like we experience it, experienced death as we experience it, in the most gruesome of ways. And here is the GOSPEL, the good news, the good tidings of great joy for ALL people, the truth: He defeated flesh and death. He rose from the dead. He brought light into darkness, and He rescued His bride.  

Thus says the Lord: In this place of which you say, ‘It is a waste without man or beast,’ in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem that are desolate, without man or inhabitant or beast, there shall be heard again the voice of mirth and voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the voices of those who sing, as they bring thank offerings to the house of the Lord…

           --Jeremiah 33:10-11

Adam was the first man. He was supposed to be the first son of God. But he didn’t believe God; he believed his flesh. He believed what he saw in the natural world instead of believing the Word, the promises, of God. He brought darkness, by which we are all blinded, and death, which we all were destined to suffer.

Just as Eve was created out of Adam’s flesh, we as believers are recreated out of Jesus’ spirit. We are wedded to Him, and we become one flesh with Him. He says, “This is my body. Eat. This is my blood. Drink. Become like me. Become a son. Become a daughter.” Just as Adam ate and brought darkness and death, we can eat again, and bring the life that is the light of men. WE are now the Word incarnate! When we become believers, we receive His implanted word (James 1:21), and every day we receive the incarnation—His spirit becoming flesh in our own flesh. “If anyone loves me,” said Jesus, “he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23). Our spirits become Christ’s spirit; our flesh, His flesh.

A new marriage. A new, uncorruptible body.

Back to God’s plan A.

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

                For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

--Isaiah 55:10-12

Your mind is blown, I know. We can’t understand. But we don’t have to. Because He is with us.

In the lengthy stretches of depression I suffered at the beginning of the semester, when I was stressed and crying in my car, at my lowest points, I asked God for comfort. I didn’t receive elaborate oratories full of thunder and fire from heaven; the word that I got was always, simply, “I am with you.” And those were some of the sweetest moments with the Lord I have ever had.

How could I not believe a God who came down here Himself, became a man of flesh who could be seen, and touched us? Literally. He touched the flesh that had been corrupted by sickness and death, and He gave it life.

It’s time to take a pause this season and remember how mysterious, awesome, and wonderful it is that we can receive this life through Jesus Christ. If we are brave enough to come out of the darkness, out of this death that is familiar to us, we can receive the light and actually begin to see.

He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.—John 1:11-13

What a sweet relief it is to be born not of this fleshly death, not of ourselves, but of an eternal being, our Father, God.

If you want to see God, don’t let your old blind flesh drag you down into death. Come into the light.

And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.—John 1:14-18

Don’t forget to re-gift this Christmas. As Jesus said Himself: “Heal the sick, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. Freely you have received; freely give” (Matthew 10:8). Bring life and light to a world that was cast into darkness.

Hear the prophecy that Zechariah spoke over his son John, who would make the way straight for his cousin, Jesus:

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High,

for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,

to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins,

because of the tender mercy of our God,

whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high

to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,

to guide our feet into the way of peace.

--Luke 1:76-79

Because of the tender mercy of our God, who loved us enough to come down and be with us and to touch us, we can have light. When you have light, you don’t have to sit in darkness anymore and be afraid of the shadow of death hovering over you. So—fear not!

Merry Christmas!