God created us with an insatiable curiosity and placed us in a world filled with mysteries, which all lead back to Him. He set us on a path of adventure and discovery so that we could have the fun of finding and falling in love with the wonder of Him.
He wired our brains to think in story form, so that we can experience the joy of opening the present of the universe to find, to our surprise, that it was all about God loving us first. He allowed us to be born helpless children and grow to raise our own children so we can experience love from both sides, both receiving and giving a love greater than ourselves. Then He came, just as we did, a helpless baby to be loved and raised by us before being raised for us on the cross, in the greatest gift of sacrificial love ever imagined.
We talk of the great storytellers of our time, and all the while sit in the middle of the greatest story ever conceived. God placed us in this sweeping story arc to teach us the value of the light versus the darkness, then He allows us the privilege of choosing the light of His love over the darkness of loving only ourselves.
Finally, He surprises us once more by revealing that our ending is only the beginning of an eternity of living in His endless light and boundless love, all the while knowing how great was our unearned rescue from a life of loneliness and darkness.
This is the story of Christmas, that the God of the universe put aside His glory to come to us, as one of us, to serve us by taking on our many sins in an act of love and sacrifice beyond our comprehension, so that we would have the opportunity, free and clear, to love Him back.
Merry Christmas from The Art of Standing.
