Concluding Thoughts on Advent and Christmas 2010 - Part II

Concluding Thoughts on Advent and Christmas 2010 – Part II

Advent additionally provides the yearly chance to pause and reflect upon the year which nears its end.  Dr. Luke, the evangelist and author of the third canonical gospel, records in the nineteenth verse of the second chapter (Luke 2:19), “But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in here heart.”  As you withdraw from spiritually deadening affects of daily routines, perhaps you will be still and contrast your life today with where you were a year ago.  For Mary, life changes eternally; she becomes the mother of our Lord and Savior.  A year previously, she conceivably had no idea that Almighty God would intervene into her life within the confines of the small, poor, illiterate and down-to-earth village of Nazareth in the region of Galilee. 

Not a respecter of persons, God can incredibly and equally enter your ordinary, bland, and unpretentious life to accomplish a feat that exceeds your wildest imagination.  The angel who visits Mary to announce God’s intentions ends his conversation with her by reaffirming, “Nothing is impossible with God.”  In this blessed season when we celebrate God’s mysterious and magnificent visitation with humankind through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, let’s ponder its limitless possibilities.

Are you pregnant yet?  Most assuredly, I am not asking this question of our teenagers; nor am I making this inquiry of anyone who is not married and seeking to have children as a couple.  Rhetorically, I ask it in the spirit of Christmas and the miracle of the Immaculate Conception.  Amazingly, the angel, Gabriel, comes to Mary to inform her that she will conceive, although she is a virgin, by way of the Holy Spirit.  Almighty God in this miraculous conception deposits His Spirit within an earthen vessel to accomplish the grand plan of salvation.  As He is not a respecter of persons, God can equally impregnate you with the Holy Spirit so that He may birth a new ministry within and fulfill His purpose through you. 

Additionally, pregnancy symbolizes creativity and art.  Christmas reminds us that God can accomplish incredible feats using us notwithstanding our humble human position.  This time of year opens our minds and hearts to divine promises and providence.  Will we risk the emotional and personal commitment to believe that God can do the impossible through us?  Will we allow the Holy Spirit to deposit fertile seeds within us?  Will we seek divine pregnancy?

Soren Kierkegaard, the great and famed Danish theologian whose works espouse the ideas of religious existentialism, refers to the Incarnation of Jesus Christ as the “Great Paradox.”  How does divinity and humanity simultaneously occupy the same body?  Will we ever be able to explain satisfactorily the contradiction of the “God-Man” who dwelled amongst in the “Ideal Person” of Jesus of Nazareth?  Kierkegaard speculates that the birth of Christ is the practical occurrence of “Eternity” (Kairos – divine time) bursting into “Time” (Chronos – human time) and redefining its meaning and purpose.  Scientifically, epistemologically, and rationally, it is impossible for these two very distinct and disparate characters to occupy the same vessel.  Interestingly, the Incarnation is an historical and biblical example of Ephesians 3:20.