Love, that’s why.

It must have been a powerful force that pulled Jesus from the joys of heaven (John 6:33) to this broken earth. He came from a place where there are no thorns or thistles. I imagine that if there were any thorns in heaven, they would be behind a glass case and put on display as a relic of the “fallen world” below. He chose to give up heaven’s posh royal palace and exchange its comforts for a sin-stricken world—a place where the closest star burns its daily impression on the people and on the soil. In this littered place—where babies might die for lack of nutrition and the poor are overlooked—he came purposely as a poor babe, to be laid down in a pile of dampened straw.

What caused Jesus to trade sheets of far better quality than Egyptian cotton for the fodder of a manger? What would push him to make his perfect body subject to abnormal and even extreme heat and cold? He could have avoided any unpleasantries of mankind. He would not even have had to be human. But he chose to be human in order to understand our toil, our scraped knees and sun-baked skin, and our brutalized souls (Hebrews 4:15). What is it about Jesus that caused him to willingly come to a world of pesky rodents and tiresome gnats? Jesus embraced a fallen and dusty earth because he loves its people—because he loves me, and he loves you (Hebrews 12:2; Hebrews 2:14-17). 

Blessings to you,
Pastor Al