Gift of Incarnation
Introduction
Advent is the season in which we prepare our hearts and minds, our homes and our churches, to welcome the Christ child, God Incarnate, God made flesh. As one way of preparing ourselves I want to explore with you the gift of incarnation from a range of perspectives, beginning at the beginning with Creation.
Week One: God as Creator
If we understand God as Creator then the divine has always been expressing the divine self in matter – in the waters, in the earth itself that separates the waters, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, the creatures upon the earth and in the heavens. The physical world is matter and matters to God, is an expression of God.
Week Two: God as Companion
God has always made God’s self known to the people. God has always been reaching out to individual persons and the people in general. We can see all that happened before Jesus as simply a bridge to Jesus or rather as an ongoing desire to be in contact/relationship with those that God created that led ultimately to God choosing to become one of us for our sake.
Week Three: Jesus Christ as an expression of God
Jesus was the most specific and complete expression of God in human form and we believe that his birth, his life and teachings, his death and his resurrection are central to our understanding of the gift life and our relationship with God.
Week Four: Us as the Body of Christ in our Time
While the Christ, the resurrected eternal one, is always with us in spirit the historical Jesus has been and gone and it is now our calling to be his hands and feet, his heart and mind in this time and this place. We are not simply called to believe in him but to grow into his likeness and to become co-creators with him, to make real the kingdom of God in this time and place.
Each week there will be five days of personal readings and reflections and then once a week there are some discussion topics if you want to study together or if you wish to journal and go deeper.