“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
Those words from John 1 sum up the Incarnation. Christmas reminds us that God, in the person of Jesus Christ came to live among us, his creatures, as one of us (fully God and fully man) in his creation.
I grew up hearing those words from Scripture but I also grew up hearing these words from a country song.
“This world is not my home, I’m just a passing through. My treasures are laid up, somewhere beyond the blue.,”
At their best, those words capture the sense that we do not belong to “This World” where that is a reference to “The World” as humanity under the reign of sin, death and Satan. However, they are more often heard and probably intended to be as capturing the idea that we just pass through physical life, die and go to Heaven. If this is so, then what happens to the World doesn’t matter because “it’s all going to burn.”
However, the Bible presents a different story. We don’t just pass through a world of no consequence to float off somewhere as disembodied spirits. No! Romans 8 tells us if a creation that is longing and groaning for a future day. We are meant to be physical, embodied people and that means we look forward to a future day when we will experience physical resurrection and there will be new/renewed creation.
Jesus came into this world, not an alien world but his own world, he made his home in his own creation. He lived in the world he made, was rejected by the people he made to look after his creation, was rejected and killed by them and rose physically again so that we too might rise. Our salvation is at the centre of the renewing of Creation.
If Jesus made this world and came to live among us, then surely it is worth caring about. Creation care, a concern for the environment is not some woke nonsense, not an alternative religion but rather it is exactly what we should be doing. It’s strongly linked to the message of Christmas.
Faithroots 