Mudshot Eyes

“To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year.”
- E. B. White

This year I understood what E.B. White was saying. Shopping for gifts and sitting through traffic gave me the feeling that somehow we were missing the obvious point. It’s like asking everyone to ignore a beautiful centerpiece in the room, so everyone just turns and stares at the wall, as if the wall is more interesting to look at.

The centerpiece that has become so easy to ignore is a feeding trough. Instead of holding food for animals, there lays the Bread of Life, as a vulnerable infant. God interrupts history to become one of us in the flesh, but instead of an entrance of parade and pomp, he enters the world among people and circumstances that are humble.

Approachable is the Savior’s name. “Emmanuel” is a name for Jesus that we hear at Christmas which means “God with us”. It is an important word because it clarifies what it is that we are to understand about the birth of Christ: God is not keeping his distance. God has come to us with an invitation to know him. God’s desire for humanity from the time of the prophets and before is that we would approach Christ for the friendship with God that we were created for.

“No longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the LORD. “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
- Jeremiah 31:34

“The time draws near the birth of Christ:

The moon is hid;
the night is still;

The Christmas bells from hill to hill

Answer each other in the mist”

- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Oh what I would give to be flying to England today…

“So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.”
(Genesis 1:27, ESV)

“Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”
(Genesis 2:7, ESV)

Image of God.
Dust from the ground.
Eternal stamp on perishable paper.
An imprint that somehow makes dust seem desirable.
Dust of earth becomes shards of gold, made in God’s image.

So many things beautifully made: day, night, the great waters and the great light, living creatures in the skies and on the ground. But only humanity was made with the imago Deo. Trees “pleasant to the sight” sprung up from the very same ground from which came man, but the imago Deo was reserved for the pinnacle of his creation.

Even in light of the obvious special care and blessing God has placed on us from the very beginning, it is often hard to see God’s glory through humanity as a whole. Stand under the shade of tall mountain pines and see how quickly you marvel at how beautiful they are compared to our technological accomplishments.

The trees and skies have consistently “poured forth speech” and declared God’s glory (Psalm 19). But humanity created in the image of God has become barely a dim reflection of this glory.

Our lack is clearly evident. We are short on glory. We are in need of a return to God’s original intent for us, and our only hope of that is to be reconciled to God. This divine-human reconciliation isn’t simply about cleaning up our act. Following Christ is a putting on of a “new self”. Isn’t it ironic that this new identity is a return to an “old” identity from the beginning of creation? Being human as God originally created us means we resemble “the likeness of God” (Ephesians 4:24).

No one lives a life of God-like perfection, but we are considered “in his likeness” when we are reconciled to him. It seems that when walking close to the Creator it is difficult to tell the difference between Him and me. In light of my glaring flaws and failures, this is extraordinary.

“Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music.
Your days are your sonnets.”
- Oscar Wilde

Happy Birthday, Krista. You are a treasure to me. I love you.

After a few months of movie drought, The Chronicles of Narnia-The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe is being released on December 9th! Anybody out there going to see it?

I would recommend at least reading The Magician’s Nephew and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe before you see it. There are 7 books in the series, all of which will keep you hooked if you start reading. This web site has a great description of each book…