The Holiday Season is full of delightful stories of good winning over evil, Stories and books like……..A Christmas Carol; How The Grinch Stole Christmas; The Night Before Christmas and many others.In a new Advent book, “Sum: Forty Tales From The Afterlives,” David Eagleman imagines what might happen after we die and the chance to choose one’s next life. One person who desires simplicity chooses to come back as a horse! Why not? Grazing green pastures, frolicking over the hillsides, running across the plains with not a care in the world; and doing all of this as a big, literal stud. His decision is made, God speaks, and the transformation begins.
Suddenly “a mat of strong hair erupts to cover you like a blanket…your neck thickens… your fingers blend hoofward. Your concerns about human affairs begin to slip away…But the more you become like a horse you forget what it is like to be human. You realize that, with your thick horse brain, you won’t have the capacity to ask to be you again. Your choice to slide down the intelligence ladder is irreversible.”
What does this have to do with Advent. Think about it for a moment. In Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, a magnificent, extraterrestrial creature chose to become human.
Thus, Christmas is an event of descent, a movement downward mobility, with heaven’s Son plummeting to planet earth, fusing these worlds together in a wondrous, inexplicable mystery.
The King of kings, and Lord of lords met humanity on its own terms, with the author stating at the end: “what we are that we might become what God is.”
Pastor Terry Rebert
Rev. Terry Rebert is Pastor of Historic Zion Lutheran Church in Ottawa Lake, Mi. and weekly devotional writer of Words of Faith for Transformation Ministries.
Rev Terry Rebert, tjrdet@aol.com;
