A Matter of Scale

One of the challenges on our recent trip was coming to terms with the scale of achievements or events. When we considered the four thousand kilometre journey across the open sea from Polynesia to Easter Island, or when we contemplated the majesty of their sculptures, it was impossible not to be both in awe, and entirely confounded.

In this age of modern mechanical genius, it was a great pleasure to be so confounded by the work of artisans from five hundred years or more before us, much of which remains unexplained. After an initial struggle to understand, I became quite content with not knowing answers to all the questions raised for me.

The story into which we are walking at Christmas is a more considerable monument than the statues of Rapa Nui, or the astonishing engineering of the Incas. We are invited to contemplate God at work in the world in ways we cannot expect and which we are unable to explain completely.

The prophet Isaiah cries out that God is levelling the earth, that forgiveness and justice are at the door. Isaiah’s listeners are invited to accept his word; that those who have been broken will be made whole. When you are broken wholeness sounds wonderful, but it may appear elusive, but Isaiah is no neophyte, and calls them to belief and hope.

At this moment, Isaiah invites them – and us – to contemplate the majesty and wonder of the Lord, who has held the oceans in his hand and measured the creation as an artisan measures a masterpiece. This is the God who offers healing, this is the God who will restore everything.

At Christmas we welcome God’s “most ingenious paradox”, that the majesty and wonder of the creator God is found in a tiny child in a rural backwater. We are told that the earth-moving God looks like us, and that “this God who comes with might” will be found vulnerable in a manger.

Consider this, indeed. Unlike the monuments of faded empire, this story is not ended. Our hope in Christ is for now, and for tomorrow. This story we tell is not a memory, but a promise, a declaration of God’s intent for all creation. When we forgive, or bless, or serve, or offer healing in our lives and relationships, we are co-creators with this God.

When we live out this hope in Christ, we are affirming the promise God makes this Christmas and every day, that God has come into the world to save. Everything.