Thankful for the Incarnation

Thanksgiving has only just ended and that wonderful season of Advent is upon us. It thus occurred to me that one of my recent thoughts was particularly appropriate to this weekend.

Sometimes when I pray I find myself thinking about how I am thinking about God. Too often God can seem abstract. He is glorious, powerful, creator of the universe, more beautiful than anything we can imagine, loving, just, magnificent, holy... and I could go on forever like this. He created the very time and space that we, in our finitude, inhabit. He does not have a brain (that thing we rely on to make sense of the world) yet he is infinite in wisdom and understanding. All of this is too much for me to comprehend when I pray "Our Father..."

Yet - God did not intend for us to worship him in abstraction. He revealed himself to us in a way that we could comprehend:

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

(John 1:14)

I am so thankful for the incarnation.

Caravaggio, Adoration of the Shepherds

1609. Oil on canvas.