Week 3—Monday Luke 1:67-68, 76-79
Luke 1:67-68, 76-79
“HE HATH VISITED AND REDEEMED”
We are driven to the conclusion that the only way for God to be revealed to us is for the Word to become flesh. So the Scripture reads:
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. . . . And from his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known. (John 1:14-18)
“And dwelt among us.” The revelation of God was not a momentary rift in the clouds that surround the mystery of the hidden Divine—a momentary insight as to what God is like, a fleeting vision. No, God “dwelt among us.” God dwelt among us from the cradle of the manger to the grave of the tomb. It was long enough for God’s character to be revealed in operation amid the surroundings where your character and mine are wrought out. God met life as you and I meet it—as a person, Jesus. Jesus called on no power not at our disposal for his own moral battle. He performed no miracle to extricate himself from any difficulty. If Jesus had power, he had power to restrain power, holding it only for the meeting of human need in others. He never performed a miracle just to show power or to confound an enemy. Jesus lived a normal life, so normal that it became the norm. He dwelt among us as one of us.
Another passage says: “He has visited and redeemed his people” (Luke 1:58). The only way to redeem God’s people was to visit them. Jesus couldn’t sit on a cloud and utter commands, or pick us up and take us to heaven with celestial tongs, not soiling his fingers with the messy business of human living. No, Jesus dwelt among us—amid our poverty, amid our temptations, amid our problems and choices, amid our oppositions and disappointments. He lived among us and showed us how to live by living.
Gracious Savior, you came where we are to take us where you are. You showed us Life in the midst of life. And now we know what Life is like; we have seen it—in you. And what we see is so infinitely beautiful that we are on fire to see more. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I walk today with One who has all the wisdom, all the power, all the grace I need.