The Glory of the Lord Shall Be Revealed
no one would have thought this West Bank hamlet would be the birthplace of the promised Messiah. And the baby? Like a stick of dynamite on its own, baby Jesus seemed innocuous enough. Wrapped in swaddling clothes in the backrooms with the donkeys, no one would have suspected this nursing infant to be the divine, fiery Second Person of the Holy Trinity encapsulated, made man. Yet He was. And despite its backwater appearance, Bethlehem was the native city of King David; a city situated just five miles south of Jerusalem and the Temple. It was the obvious birthplace for the promised GodKing. Explosions shatter and destroy. They push everything and everyone away. But the Incarnation restores. It is the beginning of Jesus’ project to draw everything and everyone in, to heal. Christ’s plan is to bring the whole universe, all that is in heaven and on earth, into a unity with Himself (Ephesians 1:10). As if by tractor beam, we are all being wooed, drawn into the deepest healing and health imaginable. Like an explosion in reverse, Jesus, the Son of God made Man, lovingly works to piece together what sin has fragmented, to make us whole and holy in Him. The Creator is making a new creation, and He’s the first to try it out, the first to really live it, “the firstborn from the dead.” (Colossians 1:18 NRSV) May we now only follow.
Mr. Tyler Blanski, ’14 Seminarian, Nashotah House Theological Seminary
Meditation Twenty
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