[Thursday's Devotional] - God with us – in JESUS?

4  God with us – in JESUS? I'm back to thinking about Christmas. Can you cope with that?   The incarnation of God is a mystery. How can the vulnerable baby be king, God and fully human? Remember what happened in those first few months of Jesus' life as a baby. Before being born there was the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, ordered by the occupying power. The place of birth lacked privacy, so it seems, and the lowest of the low [shepherds] were the first to burst into the 'post-natal' ward. And then…..   "An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream [again!]. 'Get up,' he said, 'take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.'"   Matthew 2.13 [NIV]   They fled into the night to escape, south to an unknown country, many miles away. We are told that the monster, Herod the Great, in his fear and his obsession with maintaining power and privilege, ordered that all the boys in Bethlehem, under two years old, be killed.  The whole story is as far from tinsel and soft lights as you could get. It's a story of vulnerability, asylum seeking and refugee status. It's a story with so many modern parallels, whether in Syria, Sudan or Yemen.   It is legitimate to ask, 'where is the God of love in such situations?' The answer might be difficult to express but the starting point is surely an understanding of the risks, the dangers and the devastation that God incarnate experienced in his first few months of human life. Not to mention the degradation and humiliation of the cross. Is there a challenge here to our causal understanding of the very nature of God? And what it means for us to be 'made in his image'?   Richard Farnell      Twitter Website Copyright © 2018 St. Matthew & St. Oswald's Church, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email as a subscriber to the Daily Devotionals Our mailing address is: St. Matthew & St. Oswald's Church 1a New Street Rugby, Warwickshire CV22 7BE United Kingdom Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list Want to be added to our mailing list? - sign up here!