In the incarnation, God confronts man face to face—a confrontation, a holy mystery, a sacred enfleshment full of both grace and mercy.
Humanity has the unholy habit of god-speak that attributes to god other than that which is found in His self-revelation as the God-Man Jesus.
For many, He has become the absent landlord, the puppet master of pain, or the totality of all that is. Yet, these images do not correlate and are contradictory to that which we find in the life, witness and self-disclosure of Jesus.
He is not absent but present in His embodiment, moving amongst and towards broken humanity.
He is not a puppet master of pain, pulling the strings of both good and evil, but rather the one who confronts evil as the great apostasy and brings forth and enacts the compassionate kingdom.
He is not creation but the creator, who becomes one of us that He might reconcile all things.
Christ by highest heav'n adored
Christ the everlasting Lord!
Late in time behold Him come
Offspring of a Virgin's womb
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see
Hail the incarnate Deity
Pleased as man with man to dwell
Jesus, our Emmanuel
Hark! The herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!"
-Swales, 2023
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