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I've been thinking about Christmas as it has just passed. Our Christmas affirmation is that God is with us. We celebrate that the baby Jesus is Emmanuel– God with us. Luke and Matthew give us this story, but so often around Christmas I find my mind drifting to John's Gospel. "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. . ." Wow, that's lofty language. Jesus, the Word, is God. But he is also fully human.

So, I wonder what it must have been like for Jesus to make that transition over from the heavens to Earth with all its mess. I have to imagine that it was awfully strange seeing all of creation, which John says all came into being through Jesus, through human eyes for the first time. And to experience all of this as a humble, innocent, helpless baby, born to a peasant from Galilee of all places. A favorite quote that you can count on appearing regularly in these blog posts is from Graham Greene: "You cannot conceive, nor can I, of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God."

Indeed, what appalling strangeness there is in God's mercy and God's love. To leave the comfort and grandeur of heaven, to live among us, to be born as one of us and die as one of us, well, it's strange. But it is a strangeness that I will spend my life trying to understand and gratefully appreciate.

Join me on the journey, won't you?