No one likes to consider the descent. The coming low. Whether it is a downward spiral or a bending low with grace, we tend to equate both with a sense of being less than. A downward spiral is painful to watch because it is so beneath who our loved one truly is. A bending low is impressive because it is so counter to the greatness of the person humbling serving. Either way, we have an unsettledness about it. Somehow, the descent is beneath us.
Give us the comeback. Give us the turnaround. But don’t stick us with the descent.
What if we have gotten the whole thing wrong? What if the the descent is the miracle?
You can track Jesus’ life through descents if you can bear it and it all starts with a willingness to bound himself up into humanity. I wonder if the humanity of Jesus is perhaps the hardest thing about him to truly comprehend.
That they are each born of a mother signifies that persons are marked by dependence on others from the beginning. Infants are helpless and would die if left on their own. Their lives would come to nothing were it not for the nurturing and loving environments that families, communities, and neighborhoods provide. The illusion is to think that the dependence ever comes to an end. It doesn’t. Even in adulthood, people cannot survive, let alone thrive, without food, energy, and the mul-tiple associations and friendships that inspire and instruct them along life’s various paths. Each person carries in their minds and hearts a history of relationships with others that have put and kept them on their way. Belly buttons are the unmistakable testimony to the fact that, even before they are born, people cannot live without others or without a womb-like home.
This Sacred Life by Norman Wirzba
I struggle with my own embodiment. What does it mean to be aware of my actual personhood, how to be a better witness to my actual life. When I really stop and ponder that God himself took on the full embodiment of humanity. I am left speechless. The dependency that was willingly accepted is the most beautiful, breathtaking, challenging thing about Christmas. What are we to make of a God who does such a thing?
Christmas is not about any victory. It is a messy story, full of unplanned pregnancy, shaky faith, making the best of the actual circumstances you find yourself in, looking crazy, trusting God, hope, risk, and so many unknowns. All the while God himself was in the most literal way, embodied, within a womb, fully dependent on the love and care of another.
The great saving move of God began with a long, slow journey down. In Peace in the Dark I write:
This is key to understanding Jesus’s life and the lives we are called to live in response. His mission was one of descents. Jesus descended at the incarnation; he descended when baptized; he descended at death. Down, down, down he went. God made himself ever more lowly so that we could live a life of ascents.
Down, down, down he went. The beautiful thing about Christmas is that it is the descent that made the way for all the other descents. Every ascent we get to live started there. That is what we celebrate.
May you find comfort in recognizing the descent of this season. May you be brave enough or strong enough or weak enough or desperate enough to see that every single ascent hinges on the descent that preceded it. May you welcome the descent of Jesus and the one before you as well. May you find peace.
Peace in the Dark releases Jan 30th. As we know pre-orders are important to the sales of books so any pre-order placed is so deeply appreciated.
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