And the word became flesh

I sit, pouring over maps, figures, timelines. Over the snaking lines of thousands of miles of webbed roads. Over names, cities long forgotten. Over people, people who once laughed and smiled and wept and walked those roads. People who so easily become names quickly skimmed over. I close my eyes and try to go there, try to stoke the fires of my sanctified imagination. Try to imagine cities where worlds and cultures collide, where prostitutes and priests hover in corners trying to sell assurance for tomorrow. Back to the maps, tracing the spread of hope, marveling at the circumstances that sent good news flying along roads built by an empire that tried to make itself god, and eventually, like all false ones do, fell. The word begins to live and breathe and take on color and depth, and this is what I want others to see. To see that it’s not just ancient, dead, two dimensional words. But word become flesh.

As embodied people, we struggle to understand, we struggle to grasp unless we can see, touch, taste, feel. He knows. He made us this way. And so the Word, the Truth took on flesh. Look at the words He has given us…the great majority of it narrative, truth being fleshed out until it all culminates in the one Word taking on flesh, becoming narrative. Instead of a thought, an idea, He is living, breathing truth. He becomes narrative–word breathed and word lived. Teaching by enfleshing truth. And then, the great miracle, inviting others into the story. Inviting others to enflesh the truths of who we are and who our creator is. Is it not within the narrative, within the story of our lives, that we get the clearest glimpses of glory? Momentary sightings of the Word still made flesh, come to dwell in our midst?

What is a word?

Without the flesh that brings it to life?

Words swirl…empty…without meaning

Until birthed into matter

Father you utter, you speak

And it is so…creation clothed

So speak into my life, breathe into my life

In the brokenness, in the cracks

In this weak earthen vessel

Make your word become flesh

Though it may break, even shatter me

May your story be written

Breathed

On the pages of my life

Enflesh, Father, continue to enflesh

Speak so that it may be so

For the glory and to the testimony of your great name.