This week, we celebrate the beauty and mystery of the incarnation, God coming to be with us in the form of Jesus Christ, whole divine and wholly human, God in the flesh.

Here are a few artistic renditions displaying the wonder of the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

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“Yearning and Promise,” created by FULLER studio,  explores the expectant longing for the birth of Christ. This artistic reflection draws from scriptures from Isaiah 40 and Matthew 1 and utilizes some of the major world languages with the audio and text.

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O Adonai

Shield against the name given of fire—
Beyond comprehension or captivity,
The use and power of names.

Adonai—what we call you because
The truth of redemption weighs heavily on us—
The smoking mountain, the plagues, the sea’s retraction,
Cloud and pillar, bread-speckled desert,

Land of milk and honey and the taste of blood—
All this your Name contains, Spoken and unspoken at once.
Base of creation, vessel of remembrance
For a hundred billion lost tongues, I AM, so we are
Momentary embers.

But Adonai, you privilege your clay:
You appeared once in a thicket of scrub-brush aflame—
You gave the Way so our burning
Would not consume us—
Come and deliver us again Into your wilderness.

-from The Yearning Life: Poems by Regina Walton

Regina L. Walton is pastor and rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Newton, Massachusetts. Her book of poems, The Yearning Life, won the inaugural Phyllis Tickle Prize in Poetry, and was published by Paraclete Press in 2016.

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Above, Kelly Brown Douglas, on the God who is always coming towards us, from The Work of the People.

 

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Poem on the Incarnation

Written by Saint John:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.  He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

(John 1:1-5, 14 NIV)