Pursued By Wonder: An Intimate Love

What love is this?💕

God can’t stay away.  This is the love story that has been coming for you since the beginning.   The God who walked with us in the garden in the cool of the evening before The Fall shattered our closeness with Him, is the God who came after His people in the pillar of cloud, of fire, because He couldn’t bear  to let His people wander alone.  He is the God who came to a grieving Job as a whirlwind, a tornado,  a hurricane, who covenanted with Abraham as a smoking furnace, who wildly pitched His tent with the Holy of Holies so somehow, in all His Shekinah glory,  He could get close enough again to live amid His people.  He is the God who is so for us that He can’t stay away from us.
He is the God who chooses to be with us.

He disarms Himself of heaven so that you can take Him in arms on earth.
He comes as a baby because He’s done with barriers.
He comes vulnerable because He knows the only way to intimacy with you is through vulnerability.   So God throws open the door of the world— and enters as a baby.  As the most vulnerable thing imaginable.  Because He wants unimaginable intimacy with you.

All glory had been left in heaven.  And the face of God turns one last time in the womb, the membrane breaks, amniotic fluid leaks and the skin of God slips naked and small and holy into hands that He made.                                     Only the Ancient Of Days has the authority to name this coming child, because the instant He inhales His first breath…He is older than His parents, older than the  earth.  He is Yeshua; He is “The Lord Saves”; He is God With Us.

What religion ever had a God that wanted such intimacy WITH us that He came with such vulnerability TO us?
What God ever came so tender we could touch Him?  So fragile  that we could break Him?  So vulnerable that His bare, beating heart could be hurt?
Only the One who loves you to death.
Only the God who had to come back to get you.
Only the God who would risk vulnerability,  pay the price for your iniquity,  because He wanted nothing less than intimacy.
It cost Him everything to be with you.
Who will spend a fraction of time just to be with Him?
Who wants the gift of His presence?

This post is a mixture of 3 different advent devotionals From the wonderful book, The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping The Full Love Story Of Christmas by Ann Voskamp. With Love, I share it with you.  Laura💕