GRACE ON THE GROUND (December 4, 2020)

The soloist soars high above the massive, harmonizing choir: “O holy night, the stars are brightly shining.”  But on that night,  no soul on earth expected anything but normal. We drape the story of His birth with yards of gauze and billowy bright angels.  We estimate a gentleness His weary parents never knew. We decorate the landscape of our Christmas with smiling sheep and camels trudging from the East.  And we forget how hard it is to live beside—among—farm animals in fields or in stables. We ring a halo ‘round a birth that felt—that hurt—like any other birth, for there was nothing to relieve His mother’s pain except, perhaps, the wise words of a midwife and the prayers of worried Joseph. Truth is, the grace of God, the Word made Flesh, took pains to enter all our commonness, our struggle and our dirt, so all who live below the line would see Him as their Saviour, too. Grace never was afraid of dirt—not then, not now, not ever—whether in a musty stable or in a haggard heart.  Our pain, our sin, our guilt, our shame—these are the things He gladly wore as surely as those swaddling clothes.  He was, He is, Immanuel—God with us; God one of us; God for us. So come, let us adore Him. And stay in grace. -Bill Knott

 

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