This year during Advent at Living Savior, we are thinking about various aspects of Jesus' incarnation: His becoming fully God and fully man in one person. I'm so used to just rattling that thought off as a fact, that I can lose the mystery and the marvel of God becoming human. It's so full of paradoxes that I'm not sure anybody is capable of unpacking all of them. This is my attempt.
Marvel of manhood that receives,
Endless majesty bound in fleshly form.
Conceivèd Babe whose hand conceived creation,
Godhead meekly clothed in human frame.
Is the wonder of Your Advent, mystery?
Or is it love that staggers human view?
Or cunning means to slay the serpent foe,
By power enwrapped in weakness fiercely dealt?
A mother births the Maker of the cosmos,
A maiden bears Creation's Author frail.
Should mortal root produce a deathless Vintage,
Or common clay give breath to Holy Sire?
Quizzical quandary beyond our penetration,
That flesh and Godhead meet within one Man,
Conciliating Heaven and its creation.
The infant face of God smiles at the thought.