new resolve

I have renewed this domain name, and renewed my commitment to blog here regularly. Not that anyone believes me on that.

I have been thinking today about the Incarnation. It must have been extraordinary to be Isaiah, and to hear from God that the fulfillment of the covenant promise—"I will be your God, and you shall be my people"—would be a person. In Isaiah 42:6, God tells His Servant, who is His Son, "I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations." Jesus Himself was the covenant promise and the mediator of the covenant.

I think we've forgotten how remarkable this is. Israel never expected it. That God would be their God in their midst meant for them only that the worship of God would be in the temple, and He would bless them. That in itself is grace! But to suggest that God would really come into the midst of His people, in human form, to be known and interacted with and loved and enjoyed directly: this was new.

Jesus is called Immanuel: God with us. Nobody saw that one coming, until God showed a dim shadow of it to Isaiah. I wonder how much he grasped what it meant.

But for us, it means that when God draws us to be His people, He is entirely reconciling us to Himself. We are made to enjoy Him up-close and nothing else will satisfy us. So the redemption of His people restores us to that direct presence.

Isn't it shocking to think that His presence showed up and wandered around Israel for 30 years, and people knew Him and talked to Him and cooked food for Him and laughed with Him? That is how God is willing to be interacted with. That should shatter a few of our pictures of Him as faraway and unapproachable.

It's also shocking to think that many Jews rejected the very covenant promise of God—that He would be their God in the midst of them—so they could pursue the temple worship, which was only a symbol of that presence. (Especially given that the shekinah glory of God had departed the temple centuries before! They were clinging to an empty shell of a shadow, when the substance stood before them!)

And shocking that we do the same thing constantly. We prefer the form of distant worship to the intimacy of God's presence in approachable friendship. And we picture interacting with God as similar to the worship we have in church today. Not to deride church services in any way, but I think we've forgotten that we gather to look forward to the fullness of promise. Church worship is an unavoidably incomplete experience, which is even more reason we should stop trying to shop for a "better" experience in worship. The best Sunday worship service will leave us longing all the more for the real thing, the full presence of God in Christ.