"An Incarnation Analogy"

"An Incarnation Analogy"

We need signs of salvation. We who are well off have been given signs of the cross among us like the poor and the handicapped. We have to enter their world on their terms to live them. And the beautiful thing we discover is that we become free. We come at last to know who we are by looking in their eyes.

There was a television show called Son Rise about a couple who had an autistic child. They wanted their son to change and enter into their space. And they did everything they could to get that child to enter into their world and to be like them, the normal people. And then one day they realized they would have to enter his world.

It was nonsensical and grueling to do so. The mother entered into the child’s world on his terms, day after day sitting on the floor, playing seemingly silly, goal-less games with this child, waving her hands and entering his world.

After years, many days and thousands of hours of this, her son spoke to her! There’s the incarnation. That’s the pattern of redemption. That’s the price that God paid. God entered our world on our terms to feel the grief of being human – so we could speak back to a God who would understand.

Jesus is the suffering of God. Jesus is the pain of God, the pity of God. He is the revelation of the heart of God. Somehow our own feelings, somehow our own pain and our own pleasure is a participation in who God is. God is in agony and delightful expectation until the end of time.

from Days of Renewal