There’s a scene at the end of season one of The Chosen where the disciples have lost track of Jesus somewhere in Samaria and go looking for him. When they finally find him, he is underneath an ox cart, using his carpenter skills to repair a broken axle. Although the scene is an embellishment of what’s recorded in the Gospels, it is true to the character of Jesus. We can easily imagine him doing that. I love this picture of Him.
God became a man.
At this season of the year, Christians remember an amazing event – when God became a man. That fact is extraordinary by any definition. But the ‘God became’ part can sometimes obscure the rest of the sentence: ‘…a man.’ Not a rich and privileged man, not a priestly religious man, not a king. Just an average man – a guy who repairs chairs and wagon axles as a favor, and also fills boats with fish and makes blind men see.
In the religions that men have contrived throughout history, there is one common theme – in one form or another, they all are about people reaching out to God. That is what makes Jesus’ coming as a man so unexpected and astonishing – it was God reaching out to people in the greatest act of humility that the world has ever seen.
“My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” John 5:17 NIV
Jesus revealed things about God through his own character that we wouldn’t have known any other way. One of those is His constant propensity to work. This is a good time of year to stop and think of the work He has done in our own life.
When times get tough or discouragement creeps in, it’s incredibly encouraging to think back on the work that He has already done. There really is a lot of wisdom in that old chorus about counting our blessings… naming them one by one.
I can recall the times He has been with me in sickness, even cancer. He has comforted me in loss. He has met financial needs when there seemed to be no earthly way. He has worked His saving grace in the hearts of the kids we’ve prayed for. He has been an anchor in life’s most terrible storms.
When we go through rough times, when everything in life feels upside down – when even friends don’t know how to comfort us, we can be tempted to think that we’re not on God’s list of favorites. We begin to wonder if God even knows about the mess we’re facing, the burdens we bear.
It helps to remember that God is a builder. His work never stops. Whatever we’re going through is on His blueprint for our life. Just look back at the work He’s already done and trust that the current demolition project will end in a glorious new structure – one that’s fit for Heaven.
Christmas is the perfect time to remember when the Master Builder visited us. On a cold night in a dreary stable, the Creator of the Heavens and Earth took the form of a lowly carpenter in training. It was the beginning of His most amazing work of all -- the work He is still doing in our lives today.
"...Christ Jesus: who, existing in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross.
Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
~ Philippians 2:6-11
