Bob Hamp

God is so committed to fulfilling His plans on Earth through humans, that He became one in order to rescue us all from ourselves.  His Journey from the realm of Heaven to a rough-hewn cross on earth passed through the womb of a fourteen year-old girl who had never known a man.  A few thousand years ago she joined with her new husband and mounted a donkey to travel south from Nazareth towards Bethlehem.

In 2002 I got off an airplane in Tel Aviv for the first time.  It was like any other airport I had visited, filled with crowds moving en masse through long hallways, echoing loudspeakers and overgrown golf carts.   We stood at the rental car counter like countless other times.  Then we got on the road.  Exiting the airport, the green highway signs were written in three languages, English, the square symbols of Hebrew, and the sharp scrolled letters of Arabic.  Thank goodness for the English. The experience was all pretty commonplace until I saw the next highway sign,

Green, like any sign on any highway anywhere in the world, this one pointed to an exit and said, “Nazareth 20 miles”.  That’s when it hit.  We were in a real place, as modern as any country I had visited.  And 20 miles to the east was the setting of the story I had read, and given my life to, for thirty years.  In that moment it shifted from an ethereal story of the cosmos to a real earth story.  The landscape was dirt and trees, the sun was in the sky.  Cars traveled by us and Nazareth was just around the corner!

God, not just God, but the Aspect of God that had uttered Nazareth into existence, shifted plains, jumped realms and entered this same dirt and tree laden landscape.  Entrusted into the hands of the angel Gabriel, The Word came to the living room of a child, someone’s daughter, and only with her permission (”…be it done to me according to your Word…”) took up long-term residence among the blood vessels and organs of a human He had lovingly crafted.

I wonder if God the Father felt at that moment the way my mom felt when we drove off and left my sister at college.  Jesus was not just visiting.  He was committed. A growing cluster of cells in a completely closed system.  Cut off from His vantage point where He could see all things and rule all things, He surrendered to her care.  His life and God’s plan was in her hands, or at least her uterus.  Now the waiting began and the story took a major step toward the restoration of all things.

God, the God, had done the inconceivable, and been…conceived. Really, was this the only Way?  We can certainly think of other options, but these options are why God remains God, and we remain…human.  This was the only Way if God was going to be true to His nature, and His plan.  God did not condescend in order to be an example.  He never did anything to be an example.  What He does, He does because they are bold expressions of His True Nature.  While this may serve as an example, He was and always will be, simply true to Himself.  That God is fully committed to Being Himself is very good for all of us.

So she traveled down the dirt path, without the Weather Channel or an iPhone. No ibuprofen, and no air-conditioning.  The seventy five mile Journey could be filled with dangers from the natural realm and the supernatural.  Robbers or rain, demons or darkness, any of these could have tried to thwart her progress.  Where we would prepare from every angle, she substituted trust.  If God was in her, who could be against her? She and Joseph hiked, unnoticed, carrying the hope of the world.  At this moment she was plan A.

This morning friends of mine on Facebook and Twitter got on airplanes and into cars.  They are moving from here to there, and the obstacles are many.  The weather channel says the road is treacherous.  Armed with iPhones and trust, they leave their homes and drive.  It could pass by unnoticed.  If they were not careful, they themselves might not notice.  They carry in their hearts the same Hope of the World.  Pregnant with the Living Word, they could give birth anywhere they land.  Whether we know it or not, We are plan A.