In the Bible, there are many instances where it seems as if God is an aloof being who sits on his throne of glory twiddling his thumbs until somebody throws up a satisfactory prayer, after which God reacts.
At points, one could think that God is unaware, indifferent or just about absent minded and so has to be bothered with prayer and petitioned to be moved like an anxious wife rousing her sleeping husband to do something.
However, Christmas shatters this notion of a passive God to pieces.
“The LORD saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice. He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede; then his own arm brought him salvation… “And a Redeemer will come to Zion,” declares the LORD.” – Isaiah 59:15 – 16 & 20
God is not blind to our desperate situation, to our life of sorrow and anguish.
In one breath God both indicts and redeems us, we whose transgressions have plunged our earth into a marred paradise, filled such paradoxes as love and hate, peace and conflict, harmony and discord. There is no inhabitant who can heal our ails – and so the God who watches from heaven comes to us! The redeemer, who neither slumbers nor sleeps, comes to Zion!
Passive? This was the plan from the beginning! It is rather we who have been awakened!
Let us not forget, even at the outset of creation, God cursed the ground and promised us pain, thorns and thistles. However, in the same breath, he promised that the seed would come and crush the head of evil.
That seed was conceived in the womb of a teenage Jew named Mary, and his name was Immanuel: God with us.
It seems that the promise has become flesh and dwelt among us.
