Children of God (Watching for Jesus 12)

Scripture for reflection: Luke 2:8-19

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“I walk out onto the deck of my cottage, looking up at the great river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky. A sliver of moon hangs in the southwest, with the evening star gently in the curve.

...A sky full of God’s children! Each galaxy, each star, each living creature, every particle and sub-atomic particle of creation, we are all children of the Maker.

...Was there a moment, known only to God, when all the stars held their breath, when the galaxies paused in their dances for a fraction of a second, and the Word, who had called it all into being, went with all his love into the womb of a young girl, and the universe started to breathe again, and the ancient harmonies resumed their song, an the angels clapped their hands for joy?

Power. Greater power than we can imagine, abandoned, as the Word knew the powerlessness of the unborn child, still unformed, taking up almost no space in the great ocean of amniotic fluid, unseeing, unhearing, unknowing. Slowing growing, as any human embryo grows, arms and legs and a head, eyes, mouth, nose, slowing swimming into life until the ocean in the womb is no longer large enough and it is time for birth.

Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, Christ, the Maker of the universe or perhaps many universes, willingly and lovingly leaving all that power and coming to this poor, sin-filled planet to live with us for a few years to show us what we ought to be and could be. Christ came to us as Jesus of Nazareth, wholly human and wholly divine, to show us what is means to be made in God’s image.

Jesus, as Paul reminds us, was the firstborn of many brethren.

I stand on the deck of my cottage, looking at the sky full of God’s children, and know that I am one of them."

                         ~ Madeleine L’Engle (in Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas)