Every object we behold calls on us to bless and praise the Lord, who is great. His eternal power and Godhead are clearly shown by the things which he hath made. God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. The Lord Jesus, the Son of his love, is the Light of the world. (Matthew Henry).
Watching babies develop is both fascinating and awe-inspiring. As our daughter Trinity is eleven months old now, she has started to self-assemble and organize some of her toys. For example, she has a mobile horse that carries four blocks on its back. When the blocks are off the horse's back, Trinity, like many babies, attempts to replace the blocks, thus recapturing order on the horse (and in her life).
Trinity putting these four blocks together can't help but remind me of the four blocks (backbone of DNA) that God created and put together to create life, in a wholly organized and reproducible (even self-reproducible) manner. Together, the chronological, cause and effect and spatial organization of the universe is definitive scientific evidence for a Creator. By creating this order, God has allowed humans to respond to or ignore His love in their lifetime, in an environment where causes have effects always, and where we have the time-space capabilities and a mind to process and decide on our decision for or against Christ (and our ancestors living B.C., the hope of Christ evident through their lives).
The problem is, as Christians will tell you, we are too ill to respond. Original Sin, Evolution, survival of the fittest, The Fall, whatever you want to call it, has rendered us helplessly selfish.
The solution was, as Christians will tell you, Christmas and Easter.
Because we are made in the image of God, we can't help be distant echoes of our Maker, despite our fully sinful nature. As Trinity's mind organizes itself, her actions evolve with it. Putting those blocks together is a giant feat for a young one -- as her happiness to share her accomplishment reminds us. She is yet to be regenerated with the Spirit of God, yet God is revealing her to Himself already.
When I see Trinity learn new things (seemingly daily) and bathe in the joy of self-awareness, self-involvement, and self-appreciation, I find myself continuously in awe. As I see her body develop in space-time dimensions I marvel at the intelligence and organization of all her cells -continuously emerging and dying in perfect harmony - and the brilliance of the language that superintends and drives these processes. I marvel at the laws of physics that both proceeds and superintends all this biology. I marvel when I try to imagine the moment that life emerged in this universe, and the subsequent billions of years of life that led up to the creation of the being that God could set aside and endow with His image. And creation, aware or not, can only marvel at the Creator who created, the invisible, immortal, immutable, omniscient God whose power and essence is simply out of the reach of modern intelligence.
But none of this can prepare you for the greatest marvel of them all. An invisible God, picked one moment in millions of years of human existence, to send a begotten Son, God incarnate, Jesus Christ, fully God, fully human. The Creator going all in on His created. Christmas.
The greek word kenosis attempts to describe what Jesus did to become fully human yet remain God, to become an infant in the womb of Mary. It has its roots in Paul's words in Philippians 2 (above). However it was accomplished, and because of the subsequent miracle that we call Christmas, those that reject Christ will have to spend eternity in punishment. This is the second price God will have to pay after Calvary.
All this to create a free will species where only a few will choose Him and eternal life with Him. Consider God has created thousands of people in Trinity's family tree that has led to her. Even if all those preceding her choose an eternal life away from God, Trinity has the free will to become one of His for eternity. And that will make it all worth it. That is an incredibly difficult truth for us to come to grips with. What a price.
We as parents have a lot on the line. If Trinity chooses to reject the mercy of God and live a life of ingratitude and un-worship, she will be lost forever. A thought that is inconceivable as a parent.
But if we think we have a lot on the line, think about what God has on the line. He was fine without this round of creation. Yet he proceeded, and not only paid at Calvary (not to mention thousands of years of frusterations and heartache from the Jews), but continues to pay with His created being lost forever.
Christmas was the ultimate tip-of-the-hand. God revealed His only plan that He as the perfect One could execute, but with the ultimate stipulation. Now that Jesus is revealed, there, as the Hebrews writer, "is nothing left to be done if we reject Him" (Hebrews 10:26).
What is scary is I only know a handful of folks whom I know are Christians, among the hundreds (probably more) of people I know with some depth. How will we be happy eternally without our loved ones, our friends that we have made and sustained friendships with, our family? How could a parent be happy eternally without a child they love with all their being? How is God "happy" if the great majority of His Creation is in Hell forever? These are not easy questions.
But Christmas has secured this fate. As parents, the best we can do is by actions and words show our children what is meant by living in fear and trembling of the one who Created. For us, to tell Trinity to follow her heart and the echoes of her Creator, and ignore the calling of the fleeting world of deceit and lies around her. To take the moment to look around and see her Creator's love in the distant galaxies, in the complexity of the world, in the complexity of her developing body and mind, and the beauty and self-awareness that she can appreciate -- and join us in the awe of what life is, and in the worship of Him who chose to give us this life, and in the excitement of what is awaiting those that look up to Him in gratitude; the gratitude of giving us the ultimate evolutionary out, the anti-survival of the fittest, the anecdote to everything we are and this world has evolved to become. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ in a womb, in a manger in the ghetto of ancient Israel, born to a common man and woman. An invisible, perfect God existing in a place outside of space-time? This universe, this world, billions of years of evolution on a tiny planet somewhere in that universe? Christmas? What an absurdity.
Yet millions of people have died over the past 2000 years precisely because they hold this to be true. Millions will gather in churches today and tomorrow, and many in those aisles will hold this to be true. Endless testimonies of the work of the Holy Spirit over the past 2000 years in many of these folks who have held these things to be true -- Soli Dea Gloria.
Is the story of Christmas ridiculous? Of course it is. Yet, as I sit in the pew with Trinity this evening, I look up knowing there is nothing truer than a living, invisible God creating life and, at the right time, becoming man to rescue that life from itself. The Christmas story is unintelligible, hidden and beyond our greatest imaginations. It creates far more questions than answers; though it ultimately has all the answers. But it's also relevant and alive for me and for all those believers across the globe, and all who lived thousands of years ago who could see a God of hope, a God that could conquer everything they have evolved to become. Jesus Christ is the ultimate out because He is the ultimate response to everything humans have become, and everything the Creator intends us to become. Why God became infant and became subject to the very laws He created when He created the Universe ex nihilo was the crux of the ministry of Jesus Christ, and continues to be the crux of the Christian Hope. Today, Trinity begins to embrace the absurd story of Christmas, and begins her journey in which she will freely choose between two very different directions - the narrow road and the wide road (Matthew 7:13-14). The Universe that was created as the cosmic stage for her to make this decision has given her all the necessary accommodations to make a free and informed decision. Christmas forces that decision with an urgency that our ancestors before Christ didn't have. As Matthew Henry put it, "every object we behold calls on us to bless and praise the Lord." Whether we suppress or embrace this calling, is free choice. As Trinity engages her toy horse and places the blocks back on its back, the echoes of God begin to call her, begging her back to Himself, to the one whom created time and space and the laws that govern both, then invaded these dimensions and suspended these laws, 2000 years ago, "once for all". But make no mistake; He will never impart His will on those that don't want it or Him, and He will never compromise the free will of Trinity -- nor anyone else -- no matter the price He pays.
This is the ridiculous and absurd story of a self-sustaining and invisible Creator making himself vulnerable, putting his cards on the cosmic table, for His entire creation made of carbon, and nitrogen, phosphorous and hydrogen, or as the Genesis account simply calls, "dust". This is the ridiculous and absurd story of that same God becoming the created, proving His Deity in a small window of humankind in a small pocket of ancient Mesopotamia. Most of all, Christmas is the ridiculous and absurd answer to the questions humans have obsessed about since the development of the frontal cortex allowed for it: Who are we? Why are we? And to those whom find answers to the first two questions: Who is He? And why does He care for me?
This evening, in earnest, Trinity will begin the journey to answer those questions. The law of physics will ensure she has the environment to answer, developmental biology and the Grace of God will ensure her she reaches the point where she can answer, and me and her Mom will do everything we can that she can hear those echoes and whispers through the noise of this wicked world and generation. And to find the answer we think, rather, we know, is correct: the Creator has revealed Himself most clearly through His Son, whom, 2000 years ago, was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man -- and made Himself nothing. The antithesis of His created nature, survival of the fittest, will be the swan song of all humankind, blown away forever by the everlasting deluge. For the regenerated believer we wait and will continue to wait patiently in faith and gratitude to be united with Him forever, building riches that will never spoil. This evening at church we will join with others in the Joseph Mohr classic, and in confidence, whether this be the last Christmas or there be 2000 more, singing these words, with the hope that Trinity will join us one day:
"Silent night, holy night, Son of God, love's pure light. Radiant beams from Thy holy face, With the dawn of redeeming grace. Jesus, Lord at Thy birth. Jesus, Lord at Thy birth."
