The flame was dancing on the table in the early morning light. Our plates were pushed back with nothing on them but pumpkin muffin crumbs, courtesy of Paige, and maybe a greasy stained napkin from the bacon Ellen had brought. It was the time of our weekly Prayer Breakfast when Bibles were opened and we moved toward the goal of our gathering.
Harrison was praying from Philippians 2. And do you know that feeling when you’re listening to someone speak and they start down a familiar phrase, so your brain already tunes in to what you expect to hear? But then the person changes it? I was primed and ready to hear “Thank you that you didn’t consider equality with God something to be grasped,” and instead what Harrison said was, “Thank you that you didn’t consider equality with man something to be avoided.”
My brain stopped. It’s the same thing but totally different, right?
There’s still the acknowledgment that Jesus sacrificed a lot for the incarnation, but the new wording forces my brain to shift view points. There is so much about being human that Jesus probably wanted to avoid: the physical limitation, the imperfection of our bodies, the relational messiness, the pointless political squabbles, the family dramas, the let-downs of close friends, the lack of generosity around resources, the racism and corrupt justice systems, and a broken spirit - to name just a few. If anyone had perfection at his fingertips and could look at humanity from an outside perspective, would he willingly choose it?
Jesus did. What a humbling, magnificent thought this Christmas. His rescue plan involved a level of sacrifice I will never understand until I can see with my own eyes just what he gave up, but I can know a tiny fraction, across time and culture, of what he entered into. And I’m grateful he did.
