The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. (John 1:9)

The Gospel of John tells the story of Emmanuel: When LOVE Showed Up In-Person from a totally different perspective than the accounts of Gospel writers Matthew and Luke.  Matthew and Luke tell of angelic announcements to Joseph and Mary and both of them refer to the activity of the Holy Spirit in the Incarnation.  John takes a different approach.

John’s perspective is from an even higher altitude.  Unlike the ground-level human view showing God’s coming down to bless us with His love, John’s focus is on the Incarnation from a more transcendent perspective.  His goal was not to show a Jewish Messiah to be born to a Jewish girl, or a Deliverer to be raised by a righteous Jewish man and his wife who obey the angelic message in fulfillment of Messianic promises to God’s covenant people.

No, John intends to show the Savior coming into the world… with the same true light that He had/was with God in the beginning…the same true light that conceived and brought forth life at Creation…from the other side of that Nothing Material dimension of God’s presence and now to our sinful and fallen created order of everything materially broken.

It’s like yesterday’s “aperture of the invisible” (flashing open once to create life and pour out God’s love in a material way) was now preparing to come into the world in such a similarly powerful way that it would be a moment of unfathomable true light.  This LOVE light and life would give us personal revelation of God in His One and Only Son.  Arguably, God is pouring out His love in an even more dramatic display in the Incarnation than in Creation itself.

He’s not creating things this time, though.  He’s giving Himself as true light coming into the world.  Emmanuel, “God With Us.”

Questions to ponder:

1. Is the Incarnation something we will ever truly grasp?  Why or why not?
2. How far does the “every man” go?  What does it mean that the true light was coming to “every man?”

Probably a little-known fact about me is that I’m a sucker for space photography.  The images never fail to inspire awe in me.  The Hubble Gallery—featuring the photo used in today’s graphic—lists it in their exotic category: Picture Album: “X” Structure at Core of Whirlpool Galaxy (M51)

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I thought it was perfect because it may look like an “X” to NASA, but it sure looks like a Cross to me.

Now I know that Jesus is not a galaxy or exploding supernova, but He’s so much more than who we have recreated Him in our minds to be.  Hence the exercise early on in this devotional series

… to open our minds to floating about in Nothing Material

… to witness there may be a dimension we’re overlooking in the beginning with God and

…to begin to imagine

• the magnitude of LOVE being so expansive,
• the power of LOVE being so inexhaustible,
• the depth of LOVE within the Godhead so unfathomable,

that we simply couldn’t see it with our naked eye and live.  If we were to see this kind of Über LOVE in its full force, we couldn’t handle it.  I don’t know if our hearts would stop or if we’d be so afraid that our nerves would fry or if we’d become so full so fast in our tiny human bodies that we’d explode into a bazillion bits and fall like glitter in the glory left behind.

So, I guess I imagine it this way:  It’s like God opened the aperture of the invisible for a flash of a moment so that LOVE’s life and light could burst on the scene in a measured dose so as to reveal what we could absorb of Himself and know this powerful LOVE in a real and personal way.

Questions for meditation:

1. Read Luke 1:35 “And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God.”  How does Jesus’ showing up as a baby put God’s LOVE into a form we can understand?
2. How does the Incarnation make God’s holiness something we could grow to see as revelation rather than as a startling vision?
3. All this was in the plan of God before anything was ever made.  How do you feel about the Giver of all life (the Word) becoming a Life Given for us? “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will–  to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. (Ephesians 1:4-6)

Let the beauty of God’s creative miracle wash over you today.  Advent is calling you back to LOVE. 

In LOVE He created everything.  Let Him recreate in you… the wonder of it all.

He was with God in the beginning. (John 1:2)

All the way back before time, love was a relationship.  Not something to be seen with the human eye, but from God’s perspective, filling the blackness of any void we might have perceived.  He filled it with Himself.  With His glorious character because God is love.

 And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. (1 John 4:16)

If this is the case, why do humans in general and Americans as a particularly materialistic sampling, insist upon assigning a material frame eclipsing any relationship of love?

After watching all the Black Friday events of people hurting each other—for what?  A TV.  Really.  An X-box? In the scope of eternity, that will never last.  None of this stuff will and yet it distracts us from the love that has been there all along.

The LOVE that has been there—as a relationship—since the beginning beckons us to wake up regarding our priorities and our loves.  We cannot see Him in eternity past, but His LOVE is still vibrant and powerful and fills a spiritual dimension we cannot know this side of heaven.  Is this the LOVE you know?

Let’s begin our exploration of Gospel of John and see Emmanuel: When LOVE Showed Up In-Person.  Read and ponder:

 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1)

Read that verse again—and let this thought sink in:

There is nothing material there.

It seems to be a void.  You can’t see the Word unless it’s in print or in another form, such as braille.  You can’t hear the Word unless it’s spoken.  You can’t see God who is Spirit.

If you or I had been eyewitnesses transported by a magical time-machine or Major Tom’s “little tin can” to this moment, there would have been nothing to see.

No wispy gasses. No grains of chemicals. No asteroids. No stars. No light.

“Ground Control to Major Tom

 Commencing countdown, engines on

 Check ignition and may God’s love be with you”

It’d be lonelier than an astronaut floating in the silence and the stars like Major Tom.  I say lonelier because Major Tom had Ground Control until his circuits went dead, his ship, and the stars.  You or I would be floating truly alone in a blackness of total nothingness surrounding us if what we were to see was truly all there was. 

Yet this nothingness is what every idea about beginnings must grapple with.

Interestingly, the human mind will superimpose its own patterns upon what it lacks—if we are placed in a sensory-deprived environment for as little as 15 minutes.   And yet, had we been transported back to that time with no memories to form hallucinations, it would have appeared to be the scariness of nothingness and the machinations of our own minds would have had no fuel because there were not even thoughts to rely upon to create our own comfort.

We couldn’t perceive anything to give us comfort.  And while it is true that there was Nothing Material, it doesn’t mean that there was nothing at all.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1)

The Word was there and God was there.  Not as a figment of our sensory-deprived minds but as an unseen reality, invisible to our human senses.

LOVE was actively present even though not at all a material thing.  It was a powerful, life-giving force enjoyed by God Himself, and an expression of His character. 

Ponder again this beginning for Christians and take a moment to answer the following questions:

• Why do so many people try to turn love into something material. particularly at Christmas?
• The relationship of LOVE in the Godhead was enjoyed before there was anything from which we might have derived any comfort.  How has the necessity of seeing replaced believing for way too many of us?
• How does this begin to set the stage for the necessity of LOVE showing up so that we’d be able to see the Word and see the Father by looking at Jesus?

Take a moment to watch this video on YouTube.  Try to watch it in silence to get the full effect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuT0tC109tc&feature=youtube_gdata

Then ask yourself the following questions to prepare yourself to embrace Advent:

• Have you ever thought about Jesus  (while He was with God in the beginning) having all the fullness of LOVE within the Trinity?  What does this mean for you?
• Before Creation, did He need to come in order for LOVE to be present everywhere?
• How do you feel about in the total void before Creation, LOVE yet existed?
• What did Jesus gain by coming here?  What did He give up?
• Philippians 2: 5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death– even death on a cross! 9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

1 Timothy 6:6 But godliness with contentment is great gain. 7 For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. 8 But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. 9 People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

To the voice in our heads that tells us to run after all kinds of things we really don’t need, we silence that stress by realizing that there are many wants in life but only a few genuine needs.  Experience Godly contentment by prayerfully discovering the difference.

Thinking of all the things for which we can be thankful today.  Create your own list or adapt it from this beloved hymn and sing the refrain and verses:

 Lord of all, to Thee we raise, This our hymn of grateful praise.

For the beauty of the earth For the glory of the skies, For the love which from our birth Over and around us lies.

For the beauty of each hour, Of the day and of the night, Hill and vale, and tree and flower, Sun and moon, and stars of light.

For the joy of ear and eye, For the heart and mind’s delight, For the mystic harmony Linking sense to sound and sight.

For the joy of human love, Brother, sister, parent, child, Friends on earth and friends above, For all gentle thoughts and mild.

For Thy Church, that evermore Lifteth holy hands above, Offering up on every shore Her pure sacrifice of love.

For the martyrs’ crown of light, For Thy prophets’ eagle eye, For Thy bold confessors’ might, For the lips of infancy.

For Thy virgins’ robes of snow, For Thy maiden mother mild, For Thyself, with hearts aglow, Jesus, Victim undefiled.

For each perfect gift of Thine, To our race so freely given, Graces human and divine, Flowers of earth and buds of Heaven.

 Lord of all, to Thee we raise, This our hymn of grateful praise.

And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.  (Colossians 3:17)

From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. (John 1:16)

When you start to feel stressed out about something, begin to count your blessings.  Nothing shakes stress out of your heart like remembering the blessings that God has already bestowed on you.  No matter where life finds you today, there are still things which are gifts of grace, one blessing after another.