Week Fifty-One: Incarnation
God in the Galaxies and in Humanity
Best known for her
works of fiction, author Madeleine L’Engle (1918–2007) was a devoted
Christian who perceived God’s presence in all things and
circumstances. Here she invites readers to join her awe-filled
observations:
I look at the stars and
wonder. How old is the universe? . . . All we know is that once upon
a time or, rather, once before time, Christ called everything into
being in a great breath of creativity—waters, land, green growing
things, birds and beasts, and finally human creatures—the beginning,
the genesis, not in ordinary Earth days; the Bible makes it quite
clear that God’s time is different from our time. A thousand years
for us is no more than the blink of an eye to God. But in God’s good
time the universe came into being, opening up from a tiny flower of
nothingness to great clouds of hydrogen gas to swirling galaxies. In
God’s good time came solar systems and planets and ultimately this
planet on which I stand on this autumn evening as the Earth makes
its graceful dance around the sun. It takes one Earth day, one Earth
night, to make a full turn, part of the intricate pattern of the
universe. And God called it good, very good.
A sky full of God’s
children! Each galaxy, each star, each living creature, every
particle and sub-atomic particle of creation, we are all children of
the Maker. From a sub-atomic particle with a life span of a few
seconds, to a galaxy with a life span of billions of years, to us
human creatures somewhere in the middle in size and age, we are . .
. children of God, made in God’s image.
L'Engle honors the
unique role that Jesus as Christ plays in creation:
Don’t try to explain the
Incarnation to me! It is further from being explainable than the
furthest star in the furthest galaxy. It is love, God’s limitless
love enfleshing that love into the form of a human being, Jesus, the
Christ, fully human and fully divine.
Christ, the Second Person
of the Trinity, Christ, the Maker of the universe or perhaps many
universes, willingly and lovingly leaving all that power and coming
to this poor, sin-filled planet to live with us for a few years to
show us what we ought to be and could be. Christ came to us as Jesus
of Nazareth, wholly human and wholly divine, to show us what it
means to be made in God’s image. Jesus, as Paul reminds us, was the
firstborn of many brethren [Romans 8:29].
I stand on the deck of my
cottage, looking at a sky full of God’s children, knowing that I am
one of many brethren, and sistren, too, and that Jesus loves me,
this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
Bathed in this love, I go into the cottage and to be.
— From CAC,
Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, Dec. 3, 2022
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