The Divide Erased

Could I offer a re-framing for your ponderings this Christmas?

Because, while it is powerful and beautiful and absolutely the real thing to focus in on the picture of the baby Jesus, swaddled on a bed of hay, as the heart of Christmas, I want to remind our heads and hearts that that amazing arrival was nothing more and nothing less than a personal invasion by the General - the General! - of the Army of the Kingdom of Heaven. Prior to that day, perhaps the greatest surprise invasion ever accomplished was carried out by Hannibal when he came over the Alps to attack the Roman army. And do you know what he said when he was told that that crossing-over was impossible?

"Aut inveniam viam aut faciam."

"I shall either find a way - or make one."

That is the heart of Christmas: the Incarnation that was a forever making-of-a-Way. The seemingly unbridgeable divide between God and man, Heaven and earth, was suddenly, catastrophically erased for all eternity. 

He is with us, now. 

There is no more separation necessary.