12/25/2022
He left his home in heaven, to make heaven my home 💙
Merry Christmas indeed!
✨FLESH✨ Jesus’ birth was no Insta-perfect manger scene with glowing orbs.😇 The most iconic birth in history took place in a lowly, unsanitized manger among farm animals. (Have you ever smelled a barn filled with livestock? Imagine birthing there!) It’s not the twinkly home birth scene we dream about.😉
👑 Oh, what a birth story! The King of the universe came to Earth and put on FLESH to live among us. “The Word became FLESH and made His dwelling among us..." -John 1:14a
I wonder, did Mary experience pain? Did she get scared and ask how long it would take? I don’t know, but, like most home births, I imagine it messy, bloody, vulnerable and intense.🩸
Our modern society doesn’t like dirty and unfiltered. We CENSOR birth and death. It’s too uncomfortable for our virgin eyes, perhaps.🙈
We try to clean up birth, numb the intensity with drugs and make it pretty and sterile. In postpartum, moms are told, “cover up.”🤱
We censor manger scenes & modern motherhood
Yet, birth is anything but clean and dignified!
✨Birth is the breaking of waters,
✨The gushing of fluids,
✨Moans too deep for words,
✨Expulsion of a placenta,
✨Blood running down the leg,
✨Skin-to-bloody,-vernix-coated-skin.
🐂Among stalls intended for animals, the King of kings was born to a 16 year old girl in the simplest of places.
His flesh felt cold air, his belly felt hunger and his body felt pain. He was comforted by the gentle touch of his mother and fed by the nourishment of her breastmilk.
In life and death, He demonstrated what pure love looks like: vulnerable and unashamed.❤️
Jesus left this world the same way he came into it: naked and exposed.
Flesh makes us human. It is not a curse. It is the greatest privilege of our existence and one the angels look down upon with envy.
🎄This Christmas, may you experience the outrageous, everlasting love of Jesus.
🤰May you embrace motherhood, like Mary did, it all its undignified, sacrificial, messy glory.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” -John 3:16
Words: "Flesh" by (2020)
Image: The Creation of Man (2017) by