Humble and Awkward and Messy
LETTER BY BRIAN MORYKON
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That’s me and my son, Liam, ten years ago. A few minutes before this photo, I had placed him lower on my chest. With great effort, he wiggled upward a few inches until his ear aligned with my heart. I remember thinking, That’s like me trying to get to the Father’s heart. I sensed a divine whisper. Ah, Brian, it’s the other way around. I’m the baby moving toward your heart — you need only be still enough to receive me. In the photo, baby Liam is quiet and clean. But seven weeks prior, in the delivery room, he came into the world as most humans do, in a screaming mess of scarlet mucus. “The arrival of God in human history,” writes Mimi Dixon, “was humble and awkward and messy.” This was true not just of Jesus’ birth, but of everything leading up to and surrounding it: like the trek to Bethlehem, ninety miles for a nine-month-pregnant woman; like the scorn of family and friends who thought they knew where that baby came from; like a cave and straw and animal droppings. What a way to come into the world. What a way to make us wonder. A certain kind of wonder is sparked by immensity. We look at the sky. God is big; we feel small. And so we should. A different kind of wonder is sparked by Incarnation. The same Eternal Unbodily Personal Power who spoke forth galaxies took on a local little body. God was small; our souls feel their immense worth. And so they should. Meditating on how the Son of God Eternal emptied himself to become the Son of God Incarnate is a greenhouse for spiritual growth. Kenosis is the term used to describe Christ’s self-emptying, coined from a word in Philippians 2. Theologians wrestle over what exactly Jesus emptied himself of and the passage leaves room for interpretation. For certain, divine power and privilege was left behind in his arrival. What the passage does say is that we are to think of ourselves as Jesus thought of himself. And how was that? He didn’t exploit equality with God. He embraced limitations. He made himself small — small as a baby whose ear is on your heart. |
Brian Morykon
Director of Communications
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LET’S DIVE IN...
CURATED BY GRACE POUCH
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From Renovaré’s Advent resource, Meditations on the Birth of Jesus, Margaret Campbell and Mimi Dixon’s “The Humble and Messy Arrival of God” tunes our awareness to the presence of God in the midst of messy, ordinary circumstances.
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Malcolm Guite says Luci Shaw’s Kenosis is “a near perfect poem.” Read or listen to Malcolm read the poem here, and find more of his reflections on Kenosis in his book Waiting on the Word.
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A while back, Nathan Foster asked Renovaré’s president Ted Harro to share about his somewhat disappointing trek on the Camino de Santiago and the hidden blessings that come from bumping into our own limitations.
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In one of his letters to a friend, C.S. Lewis mentions this Litany of Humility — a prayer asking for deliverance from fears and desires that conflict with humility.
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A personal promise: “Let’s Dive In” — this curated list — is a space where the creative, discerning work of humans is held sacrosanct. Renovaré’s newsletter is a refuge on many levels, and I hope it will also be what Hadden Turner calls “A Refuge of Authenticity.” Turner writes that such refuges are “founded upon trust. A trust that everything they contain is real creative output. Real words, real sounds, real images.”
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As we think about what Christ shared with us in his humbling birth, we can also lift our eyes to what we will share with him in his resurrection. The only safe and true way that humans are invited to experience a less limited range of power is to grow, by stages, into the “broader and more fundamental reality of God’s kingdom and will,” Dallas Willard explains in his inimitably brilliant but practical way.
Grace Pouch
Content Manager