"Don't Make Me Come Down There!" Advent 2021 by Pastor Welty
Jim Welty
"Don't make me come up there!" These words might be heard in homes around the country after parents have supposedly, successfully tucked their children in bed. But after they go back downstairs and get comfortable, they hear sounds from upstairs that would indicate that they were not that successful in their bed time task. The shrieks and screams of children are heard down stairs as well as the unmistakable rumbles and thuds of children jumping off of their beds onto the floor. These activities may be more likely to occur as we get closer to Christmas with the excitement of Christmas eve bringing this energy to a head. The exhausted parent stands at the bottom of the stairs and yells up, "Don't make me come up there!" Words that carry a threat of a non-positive outcome for the children if they don't settle down.
That's a rough description of what God did for us. In the beginning God created us for fellowship with him, but we humans chose to do things our way and rebelled against God. In my imagined scenario, God looked down from heaven and said "Don't make me come down there!" But God did come down here. He faithfully and tenaciously pursued us even to the point of sending His One and Only Son into the world to deliver us from our sin.
During this Advent Season we'll be exploring one of the great mysteries of the Christian faith, the incarnation of Christ. The eternal Christ became a human, walked into our story to deliver us from our sins. We'll be considering four aspects of incarnation:
the Promise of incarnation: we made a mess of things, so God chose to intervene,
the Plan for incarnation: God became a human through His Son, Jesus Christ,
the Partnership of incarnation: God invites us to partner with Him in His desire to reach the world by helping us to be incarnate in our world,
and the Principles of incarnation: how we become incarnate in our world.
Incarnation is going where people are and offering them the help they need. That's what Jesus did. May He help us to do the same.