It’s above our theological pay grade, but let’s imagine that in God’s plan to save us and invite us to eternal life, he never became man. No incarnation, no Christmas. No journeying among us. No entering into the marrow of first-century Nazareth. No God-Man who wept over his friend Lazarus. No cross, death or resurrection.
In this alternate reality, imagine God invites us to salvation with messages from afar. Occasional words, images, flashes of lightening, dreams. He tries to capture our attention, our imagination, from “without,” from “beyond,” like a father who left his wife during pregnancy, never returned to meet his son, but wrote occasional letters trying to “save” him from his “ways.”
Imagine our incarnation-less sanctuaries: big screens everywhere, but they only show images of sky and clouds. Everything is white. No crucifixes, statues of apostles and saints, or altars. The liturgy is wordless except when we say a one-sentence creed: “I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.” That’s it. Then we get up, leave and continue our busy day.
I can imagine a certain resentment setting in over the centuries and millennia. His distance. His aloofness and inscrutability would wear on us. We would learn how to tune out his messages. Maybe we’d develop techniques for ignoring the dreams and images.
And even if his messages contained words of love, how would we experience it? We might occasionally ponder his love, but we wouldn’t feel it in our bones. His love wouldn’t be intrinsic, integral, interior. We can imagine thinking: What does he know? He never walked around in a body like I do, tripping on my kids’ toys, waiting in line at the grocery store, hitting my head on an old nail in the attic and having to get a Tetanus booster. What does he know about any of that, or about chemo, or TikTok? Don’t preach to me about love. Quit visiting me in dreams. You don’t understand me. In fact, all those letters you sent? I burned them. My mom loves me. She raised me. And I’m angry about how you never stepped foot in my life.
And yet, in actuality, we are just days from marking and celebrating the Incarnation of the Son of God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. As parents, how are we doing with conveying this astonishing news to our kids, the reality that God is with us in every way?
Perhaps we as parents have had visceral moments in our lives when the Incarnation “landed” with us —maybe in baptism, confession, the Eucharist, and in other moments when we met Jesus along the road and life will never be the same. The reality of these encounters allows us to do life in an intrinsic key, God’s grace flowing through us. His love, our daily bread.
But often, when we attempt to share God’s love with our children, they seem to resist. The culture in which they are immersed views the Incarnation as distant, odd, irrelevant, even make-believe. Anxiety, confusion and despair tug at their hearts. And sometimes, they express resentment.
To turn the tide, every parent can pause, reflect and pray in these sacred days on the eve of the Incarnation.
In what ways am I distant from the daily reality of my children? Do I walk the beat of their lives, attentive, loving, responsive? As I walk with them, do I point the way to the Incarnate Son, who walks with us? Do I mouth the creed of a distant God, or do I embody the Nicene Creed, “For us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man?”
Is my family imbued with an atmosphere that “incarnates” the communion of God’s own trinitarian life — in which our love for one another is palpable? Is the sanctuary of our home dominated by screens or by beautiful visible cues that lift our eyes and hearts to Christ? If a secular person audited our daily family life, would they note our intimacy, teamwork, love for one another and for God?
No family is perfect. Every family is a construction project. But as Christmas nears, through our faithfulness to showing our children the incarnate reality of God’s love, our families will receive a wondrous gift — not from afar, not from a detached father, but from one who walks with us and lives within us. Come Lord Jesus.
Soren and Ever are parents of five children and cofounders of trinityhousecommunity.org.
