Advent

So many blessings come from being raised in a Christian home. I thank God that I have parents that taught me to fear the Lord from an early age.

One of the down sides, though, is that amazing things sometimes seem familiar. Like God coming in the form of a baby. And not in a palace--in a stable to parents that weren't married.

Sometimes, though, God gives us a glimpse of what it must have been like. What it would have been like for Mary and Joseph to wait for a child. For a nation to wait for a deliverer. For God to come as a child.

I did some waiting this year. The last few weeks of my pregnancy were painful. I was so impatient for her to come. Can you imagine what it must have been like for Mary to wait for the child in her womb, who was the promised Redeemer of Israel? Can you imagine what it must have been like for Israel to endure oppression and silence from God for hundreds of years? To wait for God to fulfill the promise he made to Abraham? I wonder if their faith ever wavered. I wonder if the promises ever seemed familiar, like a story they told themselves year after year.

I watch my little girl crawl and explore and fuss and I wonder what it must have been like for God to take the form of a child. For the Word, who spoke everything into being, not to be able to tell his mother what he wanted. How amazing that God was once like Ava--small, dependent, cute. How low he stooped to redeem what was broken! Jesus,

who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2: 6-11)

In this season, as we wait, I pray that God gives me a new sense of how outrageous this story is. We sinned, and turned away from God. But God, who is rich in mercy, promised us deliverance, sending it in the most unlikely way--his Son, born as a baby, executed as a criminal, raised from the dead.