At this time of year, when our thoughts turn to the Incarnation of Christ, I always think of something Walt Whitman once said: “I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 the wounded person.”
When I ponder the incarnation and its implications 𝐧𝐨𝐰, two years after Jimmy’s loss, with all the losses that followed, it has a whole new significance.
𝐁𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 calamity struck, I rested in a powerful God.
𝐍𝐨𝐰, I rest in a vulnerable one.
Only a God who has known suffering can rescue me in my own, and He fully immersed Himself.
Absorbing the entire spectrum of pain, betrayal, and degradation, 𝐇𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐤. Willingly. Completely. He drank the cup to the dregs, sparing Himself 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠, to ultimately spare us everything.
He 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐦𝐞 the wounded Person. Our woundedness was met with the compassion of One 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐬, who feels, who remembers. We have wounds, but so does He—the very ones He displayed for an unbelieving Thomas—relics of redemption and souvenirs of salvation.
Moved by our plight, 𝐇𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐮𝐬 as one of us, in person as a person. That is the Incarnation of Christ. Emmanuel, our Savior, God with us.
A balm for the broken, a companion for the crushed, assurance we would never truly be alone again.
The cracked lens didn’t distort my view, it enhanced it. God’s redemption on display from a vantage point I wouldn’t have chosen, but now accept. The view, 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞, is amazing.
“God in Christ has taken into Himself the brokenness of the human condition. Hence, human woundedness, brokenness, death itself are transformed from dead ends to doorways into Life. In the divinizing humanity of Christ, bruises become balm.”
~ 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐧 𝐋𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐝