There’s something I want very much—something big—but I can’t make it happen. I have to wait for it, knowing it may never come. I have to wait in faith, prepared to let it go. I just have to let God have His way. I don’t even feel right about praying for this thing anymore. I’ve given up my rights. And so, in this waiting, I have peace.
The Nativity by Gari Melchers
As I write, it is the eighth day of Christmas, and I’m remembering a conversation I had many years ago with a Christian woman who was going through a painful separation, which eventually ended in divorce. I recall saying to her—perhaps insensitively in the depth of her distress—“Why not let Jesus be your husband?”
She got very angry and retorted, “I don’t want Jesus for a husband—I want a husband with skin on!”
I wanted to reply, but didn’t—her anguish had silenced me—that the whole point of Jesus is that He is a husband with skin on. He is God incarnate, both when He was alive on earth, and still today, and forever.
The Jesus who ascended to heaven went in His skin, and so created a physical place in a purely spiritual realm—He went “to prepare a place for us” (John 14:2)—just as two thousand years ago He created the first permanent spiritual reality in this purely physical world. He married heaven and earth.
Now imagine a barren woman who longs to have children. Imagine saying to her, insensitive as it may sound, that she already has a child. For the scripture says, “Unto you a child is born, unto you a Son is given.” This is the message of Christmas. Take your stand on what God has already done for you, draw comfort from that, and then you will be in the best position to receive more from Him.
Nevertheless, I imagine the barren woman replying, “No, but I want a child with skin on.”
Yes, we all want stuff, including our God, to have skin on. We want Him to be real in our terms, not some abstraction from beyond. We want our mortgage to be paid in cold cash. We want our disease to be actually healed. We want our problem solved now. We want, as Queen sang, somebody to love.
The message of Christmas is that Jesus is somebody. He is your son, He is your brother, He is your lover with skin on, He is your Savior. He wants to come into your real world, just as He came to Bethlehem. Clasp Jesus to your heart and let Him be everything to you.
Everything.
This is faith. This is how we take the hand of God in marriage, joining heaven and earth.
(Photo: The Nativity by Gari Melchers)
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