Slugs and the Savior

                       A little food for weekend thought--

      From Tim Keller: "There's a place in one of Martin Luther's nativity sermons where he asks something like, 'Do you know what a stable smells like?  You know what that family would have smelled like after the birth when they went into the city?  And if they were standing next to you, how would you have felt about them and regarded them?'  He is saying, I want you to see Christ in the neighbor you tend to despise--in the political party you despise, in the race you despise, in the class of people you despise. 
      Christmas is the end of thinking you are better than someone else, because Christmas is telling you that you could never get to heaven on your own. God had to come to you.  It is telling you that people who are saved are not those who have risen through their own abilities to be what God wants them to be.  Salvation comes to those who are willing to admit how weak they are."
      Today a simple thank You, Father, for sending the Son and saving us weak and weary children.  Weak in willingness, weak in love, weak in compassion, weak in obedience.  Oh my, how thankful I am that it's not up to me and my puny abilities.  That it's not up to us, straining and reaching up to Him, but it's always and forever Christ coming down to us.
      And He came so infinitely far down.  Down to the depths, to the dregs.  C.S. Lewis compares Jesus' willingness to become a man to a man becoming a slug or a crab.  How would you like that?  Would you be willing to be transformed into a slug in order to reach and save the slug population? Yeah right.  Don't think so.
      And what if those ugly slugs wanted nothing to do with you?  What if they utterly failed to understand the nearly cavernous expanse you were willing to bridge in order to come down to them, to reach and save them?  I'd say "Who cares about these lowly, slimy, clueless, underserving, ungrateful slugs?!  Not me!"
        But that wasn't the response of the perfect, wonderful, beautiful, glorious Son.  No, He came.  He relinquished so infinitely much--so much further than a man becoming a slug--all to be born in a manger and die on a cross.  All for our salvation.  All for us slugs and crabs.
       So thank You, thank You, thank You, Lord Jesus.  Thank You for coming.  Thank You for loving.  Thank You for forgiving.  Thank You for dying.  And thank You for saving.
      To God be the glory.