Colossians 1:16-20:

For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in Him all fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.

God in flesh. Now that’s unlike most if the rest of the Evangelical theology that I’m aware of. Yet this concept of God sending His Son is so common. I think the Evangelical church might be taking for granted the implications of this concept. God in flesh.

I’m talking about the mystical depth of the natural sacraments that we encounter daily. God in flesh.

How is it that we can be so comfortable with the concept of Jesus being God in flesh, yet be so fearful to interact with the many ways that God touches the natural and manifests the spiritual through the physical? Or maybe we aren’t truly comfortable with the concept of God in flesh after all?

I know that I am not comfortable with the intersections of the spiritual with the natural. It feels scary to walk the line whereby I known that I have encountered God in the woods and in art and in the energies of various sacred spaces; yet I know that there is a God who supersedes the forces that also manifest in many natural ways. It is scary to admit that I desire to follow a God who I really cannot fully understand in the pages between Genesis Revelations. To admit that I worship a God that I do not know; yet He encounters me in ways that I cannot replicate or fully explain.

But I walk the line anyways. The line that keeps me close to community and reverent of the beliefs and practices of those before me. The line that allows me to believe in a God that is bigger and that I can never put in a box. A God that is holy and is also flesh. A God that does not fully reveal Himself in the Bible, but calls us deeper to encounter Him in community, in creation, and in the secret places.

I walk the line that permits the fact that I do not know everything, and that if God wanted to make it easy, He could have. So I accept grace in the arms of a Father that draws me deeper into His heart; that came to flesh so that I might better known Him, and that I might better live out who I was created to be… free of guilt and free of shame.

I’ve encountered a God who cares about me more than any Father I have every know, so I walk a line that seeks relationship rather than religion or spiritual high.

I acknowledge the truths in the pagan and the religious practices of our times. The charged and the empty liturgies. The reality of the occult. The empty spiritual highs and the pointless religious practices. Yet I will not choose to pursue my Creator through a lens of fear. God created it all. He cerated the dominions and the principalities and the powers. He is not ashamed that there are thin places in crystals or that there are thin places in traditional liturgies. He is not threatened. He created these things. These truths. Yet He is still the TRUTH. So I pursue the TRUTH. I will not be hindered by the little truths that He has created. But I will not deny them.

So I walk the line. In community. In accountability. I meet the Lord on the mountain, listen to His voice in the wind, and sit in his presence in the monastery. I worship the Lord, not His creations. I pursue the TRUTH, not the high of the supernatural or the occult, not the comfort of the controle in the religious practices.

And on this second day of Advent 2015, I ask the Creator of it all, what is the fullness of the message of God in flesh? Not that I will every discover it all; but I ask. And I sit in anticipation as the Lord reveals to me the hope of glory in a man named Jesus. God in flesh.