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Today is January 5th. It’s the 12th day of Christmas. One of the new things I’ve been enjoying this year is understanding that Christmas doesn’t end on December 25th. It’s beginning. It’s 12 days of Christmas. And we’re leading up to tomorrow, which is the Epiphany or Three Kings Day. And we’ve been meditating on and worshiping the love of God in Christ, God becoming man.
And that love was great. It was great not just in its scale, but in its kind, in the way that God loved us. And there’s never been anything else like it. There’s never been another religion that has anything close. Not the Muslim religion or the Buddhist or the Hindu or the whatever. No movie, no poem, no song, no story has ever even come close to this scale and kind of love.
God didn’t merely visit humanity. He literally clothed himself in it. He didn’t show up as an outsider. He became an insider and he put on flesh that grows tired and weary. He wore skin that can be wounded and he took on a body that can suffer and die. Think about that. God didn’t just borrow our humanity temporarily. He wore it to the death.
And that sets a pattern that nothing else can compare to. The Bible reminds us that we come from dust and we will return to dust. We’re fragile. We’re fading. We’re living in a temporary platform and only here for a moment. We’re like evaporating mist. We’re here one day and we’re gone the next. Our humanity is so weak.
It’s so weak that one devotional writer called us walking ashes. That’s a fitting description. And here’s the the the the mind-blowing concept. The eternal son of God wraps himself in that fragile dust and dirt. The one who was clothed in glory, in splendor, in majesty, he sews sackcloth and ashes. Sackcloth is is an ancient uh fabric made of goat hair.
It’s like the worst itchiest wool and it and it resembles and signifies repentance and misery and suffering. He sews that to his cloth of gold and wears it for the rest of his life. This is the divine God joined to frail humanity in a man. It’s infinity wrapped in frailty. The incarnation is love descending to the lowest possible place.
I mean, listen to how scripture says this in John 1:14. So, the word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. God didn’t send us a message. He sent us himself. He didn’t shout to us from heaven. He stepped into the room. The Bible says the word became human and made his home among us.
