The Model of the Manger
“But Mary treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart.” Luke 2:19
Each year families and churches around the world commemorate the Season of Advent. When our kids were young, we created our own Advent calendar with special readings for each day of the four weeks leading up to Christmas day. The church our son currently pastors sets a time aside in each Sunday worship gathering when a family reads a passage of Scripture focusing on the birth of Jesus and lights a candle on the Advent wreath.
The term “Advent” was adopted from Latin adventus meaning "coming; arrival" which is the translation of the Greek parousia meaning presence, arrival, or official visit. The season of Advent in the Christian calendar therefore anticipates the "coming of Christ" from three different perspectives: the physical nativity in Bethlehem, the reception of Christ in the heart of the believer, and the eschatological Second Coming.
The all-sufficient, all-powerful, sovereign, Creator of the universe who holds all things together entered into humanity as a baby. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Every human being enters the world as a baby. So, the Son of God, in order to become flesh, had to begin as a baby. But could it be that the means of His incarnation is more than that? Is there a deeper truth we are to ponder from the stable scene?
When a baby is born, he is completely helpless. A newborn cannot do anything on his own and is totally dependent on his parents for nourishment, shelter, provision, protection, and even movement. He has to be carried everywhere he goes. He has to be fed and cleaned up in the aftermath of being fed. Total dependence!
My friend Mike Wells used to say, “All that Jesus did He never did. The One who did everything did nothing so that we who can do nothing get to do everything.” What did Mike mean by that? Jesus, as the Son of God, was limitless in His power and authority. Yet, as the Son of Man, He set aside the independent use of His attributes and lived His life on earth in constant connection to and desperate dependence on His Father and the Holy Spirit. Why? To model for us, who can never live righteously, how we, in humble submission to and utter dependence on the Holy Spirit, can live in relationship with our righteous God.
Jesus came to us, sent by His Father, because we couldn’t get to Him. Unredeemed mankind is incapable of living righteous enough to settle their sin debt or conquer their sin nature. We could never defeat sin... ever! So, He came to live among us so that, through His death and resurrection, He might come to live in us. The way He lived among us is how we live His Life in us… constantly connected to and desperately dependent on Him as we wait for Him to come again.
Could it be that one of the main things that Mary pondered in her heart was the inconceivable truth that the Creator and the Sustainer of her very existence had just made Himself dependent on her to show the rest of us how we are to be dependent on Him?
That’s a lot to ponder… for Mary… and for us too.
“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” John 15:4-5
