It’s Christmas!
This week’s article is written by Jill Goring, Ethnos360 Translation and Consultant Coordinator.
We’re coming up on the Best Day Ever, right? The day we celebrate what makes the God of the Bible different from any other god: He comes down. To where we are. Christmas is the Almighty God of the Universe doing what He’s done since day six of Creation — bending down, drawing near, reaching out — coming to be with His dear ones.
This is the One Who has always made every effort … gone the extra mile … knocked down every barrier … searched every corner ... kept coming back … to the Garden … to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob … to Moses on the mountain … to His own people, Israel, time after time after time. Every time His people cried “help,” He was there. Whenever even the wickedest king said, “I’m so sorry,” He forgave.
photo by Greyson Joralemon
God Incarnate
This is the One Who made His throne on a gold-covered, blood-spattered box, barely concealed behind a delicately embroidered linen curtain, in a glorified tent in the middle of Camp Israel, and said to Moses, “I will meet with you there and talk with you.”
It’s that God.
Putting on a human body — a body envisioned in the mind of an ingenious Designer and reproduced billions of times (but rendered no less miraculous by its frequency) — and now that Creator Himself, who for all eternity inhabited the whole universe with no physical limitations, now HE, in the greatest of miracles, is somehow limiting Himself to an embryonic egg in the womb of a virgin He created, where He will develop like every other baby, and come into the world like every other ‘human being’ before Him so that He can experience every human experience from the first cry of birth to the last sigh of death.
This Is Our God!
This God is so determined that we hear Him. “I’m right here. Look at me. Listen to me. Watch me. Talk with me. Face to face.”
The Word became flesh and lived right here with us. And we — ah, we! — we beheld His glory!
Which is why you keep praying and giving, and translators keep laying down their lives in difficult places, making sure people do hear in the language of their hearts the Message from the God with a heart like that.