We Are His Kids -- Advent #1

Advent is the time the Christian church celebrates the coming of our Savior. The basic story is that the Son of God willingly took our flesh into his own Person, becoming God-and-human, so he could experience our own lives just like us, live without any sin and willingly give himself, out of his eternal love, as a sacrifice for all human sins for all time. Then he was resurrected to life. He shared our flesh with us, he lived perfectly for us, he died for us, and he was raised back to life for us -- completing the cycle of human life and giving us that same eternal life he has now. Wow!

His gift applies to us all, no matter how well or poorly we understand it. Paul describes us as being "in Christ" about 200 times in his letters, and he means we are included in Christ, caught up into his love and his life, and more secure than we know how to imagine or describe.

The problem is, we humans have this fixation that only by doing something good can we get something good in return, like it was wages for a job. We keep forgetting that we are already called God's kids through Jesus. This cartoon illustrates our problem a little:

Of course, the truth is, God is the owner of the universe and compared to him, in our flesh we are nothing. Some of the Bible's statements about God come from that perspective, and they're similar in tone to how a peasant would talk to a mighty king. But now that we are "in Christ" that gap has been bridged by Christ himself, who is both the Son of God and human. We now call God "Father" -- Jesus taught us that in the 'Lord's prayer,' which was a radical thought then and is a radical thought to some today.

The season of Advent reminds us of all this and more, all of it coming from the love of God for us. Can you take some extra time this month to stop and reflect on the miracle that changed the master - slave relationship to a Father - son relationship? I think you'll be blessed!