my friend britt posted this. it is goodness

For thirty-three years he would feel everything you and I have ever felt. He felt weak. He grew weary. He was afraid of failure.He was susceptible to wooing women. He got colds, burped, and had body odor. His feelings got hurt. His feet got tired. And his head ached. To think of Jesus in such a light is – well it seems almost irreverent doesn’t it? It is much easier to keep the humanity out of the incarnation. There is something about keeping him divine that keeps him distant, packaged and predictable.  But don’ do it. For heaven’s sake don’t do it. Let him be as human as he intended to be. Let him into the mire and the muck of our world. For only if we let him in can he pull us out.
 
For thousands of years, using his wit and charm, man tried to be friends with God. And for thousands of years he had let God down more than he had lifted him up. He’d done the very thing he promised he’d never do. It was a fiasco. Even the holiest of heroes sometimes forgot whose side they were on. Aaron. Right hand man to Moses. Holy priest of God. But if he was so saintly, what is he doing leading the Israelites in fireside aerobics in front of the golden calf? The sons of Jacob. The fathers of the tribes of Israel. If they were so special, why were they gagging their younger brother and sending him to Egypt? David. The man after God’s own heart. THe King’s king. The giant slayer and song writer. He’s also the guy whose glasses got steamy as a result of a bath on a roof. And Samson. Swooning on Delilah’s couch, drunk on the wine, perfume, and soft lights. He’s thinking ‘She’s putting on something more comfortable.’ She’s thinking ‘I know I put those shears in here somewhere.’ Adam adorned in fig leaves and stains of forbidden fruit. Moses throwing both a staff and a temper tantrum. King Saul looking into a crystal ball for the will of God. Noah, drunk and naked in his own tent. These are the chosen ones of God? This is the royal lineage of the King? These are the ones who were to carry out God’s mission? Its easy to see the absurdity.Why didn’t he give up? Even after generations of people had spit in his face, he still loved them. And yet it is that very irrationality tha gives the gospel its power. Only God could love like that. 
 
The Judean Lion. He walked out from among the dense trees of theoloy and ritual and lay down in a brief clearing. In his paw was a wound and in his mane were stains of blood. But there was a royalty about him that silenced even the breeze in the trees. Bloodstained royalty. A God with tears. A creator with a heart. God became earth’s mockery to save his children. How absurd to think that such nobility would go to such poverty to share such a treasure with such thankless souls.
 
He looked around the carpentry shop. He stood a moment in the refuge of the little room that housed so many sweet memories. He had come to say goodbye. It was time for him to leave. He had heard somethig that made him know it was time to go. So he came one last time to smell the sawdust and lumber. Life was peaceful here. I wonder what he thought as he took one last look around the room. I wonder if he hesitated. I wonder if his heart was torn. I wonder if he rolled a nail between his finger and his thumb, anticipating the pain. It was here that his human hands had shaped the wood his divine hands had created. I wonder if he wanted to stay. I wonder bcause I know he had already read the last chapter. He knew that the feet that would step out of the safe shadow of the carpentry shop would not rest until they’d been pierced and placed on a Roman cross. You see, he didn’t have to go. He had a choice. He could have stayed. He could have kept his mouth shut. He could have ignored the call or at least postponed it.
 
But his heart wouln’t let him. If there was hesitation on the part of his humanity, it was overcome by the compassion of his divinity. His divinity heard the voices. His divinity heard the hopeless cries of the poor, the bitter accusations of the abandoned, the dangling despair of those who are trying to save themselves. And his divinity saw the faces. Some wrinkled. Some weeping. Some hidden behind veils. Some obscured by fear. Some earnest with searching. Some blank with boredom. 
 
And you can be sure of one thing. Among the voices that found their way into the carpentry shop in Nazareth was your voice. Your silent prayers uttered on tearstained pillows were heard before they were said. Your deepest questions about death and eternity were answered before they were asked. And your direst need, your need for a Savior, was met before you ever sinned. And not only did he hear you, he saw you. He saw your face aglow the hour you first knew him. He saw your face in shame the hour you first fell. The same face that looked back at you from this morning’s mirror, looked at him. And it was enough to kill him. He left because of you.
 
He laid his security down with his hammer. He hung tranquility on the peg with his nail apron. He closed the window shutters on the sunshine of his youth and locked the door on the comfort and ease of anonymity. Since he could bear your sins more easily than he could bear the thought of your hopelessness, he chose to leave. It wasn’t easy. Leaving the carpentry shop never has been. 
 
No names do him justice. But there is one name which recalls the quality of the Master that bewildered and compelled those who knew him. It reveals a side of him that when recognized is enough to make you fall on your face. Jesus. In the gospels it’s his most common name – used almost six hundred times. And a common name it was. When God chose the name his son would carry, he chose a human name. He chose a name so typical it would appear two or three times on any given class role. He was touchable, approachable, reachable. And what’s more, he was ordinary. If he were here today you probably wouldn’t notice him. He wouldn’t turn heads. ‘Just call me Jesus’ you can almost hear him say.
 
It is worth noting that those who knew him best remembered him as Jesus. The titles Jesus Christ and Lord Jesus are seen only six times. Thoe who walked with him remembered him not with a title or designation, but with a name – Jesus. When God chose to reveal himself, he did so through a human body. The tongue that called forth the dead was a human one. The hand that touched the leper had dirt under its nails. The feet upon which the woman wept were calloused and dusty. And his tears…oh don’t miss the tears…they came from a heart as broken as yours or mine has ever been. ‘For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.’

{lucado}

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