My goodness, Christmas carols are loaded with contrasts and paradoxes. And so am I. Good and bad. Deserved and undeserved. Earned and unearned. Beautiful and ugly.
“Pleased, as man, with men to dwell,
Jesus, our Emmanuel!”
God, pleased to be a man, and dwell with men?
This Incarnation signaled that a human person is worthy of being divine, and that the divine knows our experiences of joys and sorrows and deep suffering, for it is that to which Yeshua submitted freely. We cannot claim Abba doesn’t understand what we go through. He opted in–into our humanity and excruciating suffering to death.
YHWH came to us the same way each of us came to the world. A baby in absolute need for survival.
God chooses us, despite our blindness to that. Not because we deserve to be divine, but exclusively because God loves us with no conditions. Just because God is goodness.
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Share your favorite carol lyrics and the paradoxical mysteries they raise inside you, below, please!
Feel with Neil 