We’ve been considering if our world, and us humans, are like a broken masterpiece. If so, how would God fix it?
He could play it safe and digitally touch it up. There’d be no more mistakes, no more explosions. Or, he could use the same dangerous ingredient that made the whole mess in the first place. He could add some paint in the right places, or use a chemical that stabilizes the explosive mixture.
That’s what he did.
At Christmas, we celebrate that God became one of us: a tiny little baby. Babies are indeed messy, unpredictable, and a little dangerous…sometimes even explosive!
God could have given up on humans, and left us in the mess we created. But instead he said, “you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.””.
He was born to human parents in a human village in a human country in the Middle East. But he was not just any human child.
He was predicted 500 years earlier by the Prophet Isaiah: “a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
In the middle of violence and oppression, pain and sorrow, God, with all those titles, became part of his world. He became a tiny baby, in a tiny corner of the world, with all it’s risks, all its messiness that we probably know all too well. The artist became part of the art…and made the whole thing a masterpiece again.
How Paul’s Letter to Titus put it:
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. (Titus 2:11-14 ESV)
Does this sound like you? Maybe not.
But most of us, when we’re honest, have lives that are like a work of art gone bad. They seemed to be on track to be a masterpiece like that, but then got destroyed. God doesn’t give up on us…or start over. He uses us…messy and dangerous as we are…to make and remake his masterpiece.
Question: How do you think God uses people like us to reform the world, his masterpiece?
Meeting with a Group? Your discussion questions are in this week’s Group Study Guide
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