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Finally.
Jesus got through the suffering and the death, and reached the
glory. The happy ending – or possibly
the happy beginning. This is what it’s
all been leading up to. Did he really
have to go through all that hard stuff first?
As you can
probably guess by now, the answer is a resounding yes. Across the pages of the New Testament, it
rings like a clanging bell: “Cross…
glory. Cross… glory. Cross… glory.” It was only through the humiliation that
Jesus obtained his exaltation. Only
through being born in a stable that he became king of the universe. Only through dying that he gave eternal life.
And the
amazing thing is that once again, we can share in this. Jesus was glorified as a person; the whole point of his coming was to bring our
humanity back into the presence of God. We
are human whether we like it or not. He
is human because he chose to be; and in that choosing he showed us the path to
redemption. We share in his suffering,
we are baptised into his death, we are raised with him in glory.
Sometimes
that glory can be hard to find. The
world around us, and indeed our own lives, don’t seem to reflect much of
it. Jesus may indeed be sat at the right
hand of God, we feel, but in that case he is way up there, and we’re still
struggling down here. “As it is,” admits
the writer to the Hebrews, “we do not yet see everything in subjection to him
(that is, Jesus).” If everything is
meant to be under his control, sometimes there is precious little sign of it.
“But,” the
writer continues, “But we see Jesus.” We
do not yet see everything in subjection to him; but we see Jesus. The world is not as we hope it will be; but
we see Jesus. And the more we look for
him, the more we look at him, the more we see his glory filtering into even the
darkest of times.
When God
seems far away, we see Jesus, who came to reflect his love to us.
When our
burdens seem too much to bear, we see Jesus, who came to suffer with us.
When the
fear of death casts a chill over our hearts, we see Jesus, who came to die for
us.
When all we
can feel is the humiliation of the cross, we see Jesus, who came to be
glorified over us.
And as we
see more clearly, we find ourselves sharing more deeply with the one who came
to share with us.
And as we
share in his love, his suffering, and his death, a transformation happens, and
we find our way to glory.
And in a
blaze of golden light, the sun rises on Christmas morning. And we see Jesus.
Photo attribution: Mhuntington1689 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/
Photo attribution: Mhuntington1689 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/
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