Ultimate Gift - He Gave Himself

Posted on July 25, 2006
Filed Under Uncategorized |

God came into time and space in the Incarnation. He united himself with us, giving us the greatest gift.

“When I draw the Lord He’ll be a real big man. He has to be to explain the way things are” (A Study of Courage and Fear). A young black girl in Mississippi was describing a picture of God she had drawn at the request of psychiatrist and Harvard professor Robert Coles. Dr. Coles won the Pulitzer Prize for his Children of Crisis series.

The girl was already struggling with the world at large, and with what it meant to be a black woman in the American South. Her expectations of God are shared by Christians everywhere. We all like to visualize God as a “real big man” capable of giving the help we need.

God gave himself

But ironically, when God came in the flesh, he didn’t begin his human existence as a “real big man.” In Jesus, God started the way we start. He was born. He acted in history to explain and resolve “the way things are.” He gave humanity the ultimate gift: he gave us himself. God came in the flesh, becoming one of us, for our salvation.

Greg Albrecht

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