It’s the day after Christmas. If you are like me, the gifts have been put away, the boxes folded into the recycling, and the returns are beginning. But as you put away the stockings, fight the temptation to put away the scandal of the particular which the Incarnation of Christ teaches us. Take the decorations down but keep your dependence on the One they welcomed and celebrated. The festivities may wrap up, but we still need to think deeply about the Incarnate Christ.

I love how W.H. Auden captures the temptation to pack up the Incarnation along with the ornaments in For the Time Being:

“Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes–
Some have got broken– and carrying them up to the attic….
Once again,
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.”

We cannot move on. In Christ alone we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).

All our lives are hidden in the life of an infant born in a nowhere town. Our salvation was swaddled up with a baby and laid in a feeding trough. Our fear of death was neatly folded and discarded with his grave clothes. Our hope rose with Him as he returned home to father. Our future will be secured with his second coming. 

When Glory Became Granular

Incarnation:
When glory became granular
And omnipresence particular;
When the unapproachable
Bent to be perpendicular.

Crucifixion:
When perfection was pierced
And Holiness Himself hounded;
When right reward was traded,
For a curse long-compounded.

Resurrection:
When death was decimated
And sinners’ salvation secured.
When life itself was liberated
Through His righteous reward.

Ascension:
When Holiness came home
And the Heir took the throne.
When the fecund Father
Welcomed back His Own.

Return:
When the Victor revisits
And the children are renamed.
The kingdom consummated
And the garden reclaimed.