See What Love the Father Has

John 3:16; 1 John 4

The true and certain miracle of Christmas is the baby in the manger. He is the miracle because of what he is―Immanuel, God with us. God in the smallest, weakest, frailest, most dependent form of being human. God, spinner of planets, star thrower, and Lord of all that is, as a helpless infant, cradled in a feed trough. God, the one who heard the morning stars begin to sing, the one who sees the tiniest of strings binding all that is together, and the one who sparks life into being, resting in his mother’s arms. That is the inescapable miracle of Christmas.

It makes the love that is God clear for all to see, though, understanding what this love means for us can sometimes escape our grasp.

First, what it reveals of the love that is God―God has not, will not, and shall not ever forsake us. The simple truth that God chooses to meet us as an infant reveals that God is with us in our own weakest, frailest, and most dependent moments. God communes with us in such a way that our inability to live up to our own standards, to meet our own criteria, and to live by our own certain rules of what is right become irrelevant. God chooses to mingle himself with us in our littlest form. 

Never let go of the grace embodied in this understanding. It is this same grace that waits for us at the next inevitable misstep we stumble into. It is this same grace that embraces us as we betray even the most intimate trust. It is this same grace that enfolds us as we once again deal with the fact that we engaged the mouth before we engaged the brain, spouting off something hurtful without a single thought before it left our lips. God knows us deeply and surely, never wanting us to fall to our own createdness. God wants us to realize the promise in being made as a child of God.

So, another reason to never release your grip on this grace is that God is also with us when we are simply overwhelmed. Not every moment of disarray or chaos comes through our own making. But then they come, they engulf us, and we cannot see any way to escape, overturn it, or end it. In the Christ child, God knows such helplessness. Yet, because God knows it, it loses its power to imprison us. God limits its grip. God offers us the release catch. Trust the child in the manger―he will become the one not even the tomb could hold. So great is the mighty power of God that never is there a moment when our worst fears can come to any sort of ultimate fruition. It is not that we deny or dismiss the power of tragedy to effect us, but rather we find mitigating mercy within it. My dad, as he taught ethics at the community college in my hometown, often landed on the same lesson in case study after case study―it is not so much that God offers an explanation for suffering, but that God offers redemption from suffering―there are no irredeemable cases. All can be healed in Christ. The infant will grow and mature into the savior. We can afford to be patient―to wait and see what God will do, for God will do something, and reclamation will come.

Now we move to another aspect of what it means that God meets us as an infant in a manger―God still trusts us.

That is the simple proclamation of Jesus being born to Mary and cared for by Joseph. One of my favorite Christmas images is a medieval woodcut that shows Joseph washing Jesus’ dirty nappies, hanging them to dry beside the fire. God entrusts himself to these simple human beings. That is staggering! God believes in them! God believes in their abilities and possibilities as parents. 

If God believes in them, then God also believes in us. Never lose sight of that, for in that understanding comes a word of hope that is indefatigable. There is nothing that can dim that hope. The reason is sure and strong―if God believes in us, then God will be with us―God will totally and completely embody the promise of Immanuel in every aspect we can imagine of that sign. God trust us with the work of the kingdom, even in a world such as this one. God trust us with the ministry of grace, even as we can scroll all the reasons and circumstances to undermine that trust. God can do so because God dwells with us and within us. God’s strength meets us in our weakness. God’s power meets us in our frailty. God’s love carries us through every desert of apathy, appalling evil, and apostasy. God in Christ means God will see God’s purposes through to fruition, no matter what circumstance we find before us.