Week Fifty-One: Incarnation

God in the Galaxies and in Humanity

Best known for her works of fiction, author Madeleine L’Engle (1918–2007) was a devoted Christian who perceived God’s presence in all things and circumstances. Here she invites readers to join her awe-filled observations:

I look at the stars and wonder. How old is the universe? . . . All we know is that once upon a time or, rather, once before time, Christ called everything into being in a great breath of creativity—waters, land, green growing things, birds and beasts, and finally human creatures—the beginning, the genesis, not in ordinary Earth days; the Bible makes it quite clear that God’s time is different from our time. A thousand years for us is no more than the blink of an eye to God. But in God’s good time the universe came into being, opening up from a tiny flower of nothingness to great clouds of hydrogen gas to swirling galaxies. In God’s good time came solar systems and planets and ultimately this planet on which I stand on this autumn evening as the Earth makes its graceful dance around the sun. It takes one Earth day, one Earth night, to make a full turn, part of the intricate pattern of the universe. And God called it good, very good.

A sky full of God’s children! Each galaxy, each star, each living creature, every particle and sub-atomic particle of creation, we are all children of the Maker. From a sub-atomic particle with a life span of a few seconds, to a galaxy with a life span of billions of years, to us human creatures somewhere in the middle in size and age, we are . . . children of God, made in God’s image.

L'Engle honors the unique role that Jesus as Christ plays in creation:

Don’t try to explain the Incarnation to me! It is further from being explainable than the furthest star in the furthest galaxy. It is love, God’s limitless love enfleshing that love into the form of a human being, Jesus, the Christ, fully human and fully divine.

Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, Christ, the Maker of the universe or perhaps many universes, willingly and lovingly leaving all that power and coming to this poor, sin-filled planet to live with us for a few years to show us what we ought to be and could be. Christ came to us as Jesus of Nazareth, wholly human and wholly divine, to show us what it means to be made in God’s image. Jesus, as Paul reminds us, was the firstborn of many brethren [Romans 8:29].

I stand on the deck of my cottage, looking at a sky full of God’s children, knowing that I am one of many brethren, and sistren, too, and that Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
Bathed in this love, I go into the cottage and to be.

From CAC, Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, Dec. 3, 2022

I'd like to read a poem by Maya Angelou with which I am sure you are all familiar. It's entitled, "Phenomenal Woman" and with apologies to Maya Angelou I will add a special verse at the end dedicated to Class '77. (Dr. Carmen "Pinky" Valdes)

 

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