Category Archives: Incarnation

>The Holiness of God – Chapter Eleven-

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Yes, the turkey and some baking is awaiting for me; but I do not want to miss this last post on this last chapter of this wonderful book, The Holiness of God, by R.C Sproul, so while every one is still in bed, I will type.

The title of this chapter is, Holy Space and Holy Time; and it opens with a wonderful quote from C.S Lewis,

“Where, except in the present, can the Eternal be met?”

For me this is a very important chapter because it brings down to today, down to this moment, down to the place where I meet my God, His Holiness.

This is where we are as Christians, as believers, as seekers of His face; we are in a daily quest to be more like Him, to love Him more, to find Him more in every minute that frames our life.

“We seek a threshold that will lead us over the border from the profane to the sacred. It is a quest for sacred space, for ground that is holy ground”

We want that. We don’t want to be trapped in the moment, in the running, in the to-do list, we want to walk beyond to the transcendent because we know our God is transcendent; because we know that what we do here, today, right this moment has a transcendent consequence.

But I live here, I live in squares in a calendar, in hours made of 60 minutes, and here, in between this keyboard and baking muffins, and kissing the forehead of my children, in between teaching Spanish and the life of Leonardo DaVinci; and snapping pictures here and there; in between making beds and making love with my husband, I live in Holy Space and Holy Time, because God has come to meet me here, where I do my life.

Sproul reminds us that the “holy space Moses occupied was made holy by God’s presence” , and isn’t my home a holy space too? And it is holy not because we, this family which I love so much, is sinless, NO! it is because God has come to us. He has reached us. His presence abides in us; among us.

“Our contact with the holy is not merely an encounter with a different dimension of reality; it is meeting with Absolute Reality. Christianity is not about  involvement with religious experience as a tangent. It involves a meeting with a holy God, who forms the center, or core, of human existence. The Christian faith is theocentric. God is not at the edge of Christians’ lives but at the very center. God defines our entire life and worldview”

Am I a Christian? Do I live meeting with a holy God every day all day?

I am planning to make a nice turkey for our family and their favorite cookies will soon be in the oven; is God there? I slice an apple, and chop some chocolate; I pray to my God. I give thanks for His goodness. He is here, in the moment, in this place, my kitchen.

I wash the dishes again, and again and again… I can complain and be ungrateful, or I can pray I find in that moment, a sacred moment.

Dr. Sproul reminds us also of two holy times that frame our lives as Christians; the Sabbath and Lord’s Supper.

“Each Sabbath day, believers observe sacred time in the context of worship. It is the keeping holy of the Sabbath day that marks the regular sacred time for the Christian. The worship service is a marking of a special liturgical time. Because of the reality of the Incarnation, history itself becomes sacred for the Christian. We mark our calendars with reference to time that is B.C or A.D. We have a theology of history because we realize that there is a holy purpose to history, even our salvation”

And the our pretty wall calendar is coming to an end; and a new one is in the mail. We filled squares, we have filled until today, 357 more days under His sun. We have walked in history. We have been part of that Sacred History that He wrote. And we like to talk about new purposes for the next year… what about today? Why not right this moment?

Why not just live in Holy space and Holy time every day? Acknowledging His presence with in us, among us.

Sabbath comes not at the end of the week, but at the beginning of the week to remind us that the day we’ll stop breathing under His sun, rest will not be the last thing we do,  but the first thing of our new life not under His sun, but under His glory which shines brighter than the sun!

The second is the Lord’s Supper; Sproul reminds us that the celebration of the Lord’s Supper involves Sacred time in three distinct ways:

“First, it looks to the past, instructing believers to remember and to show forth Christ’s death by this observance. Second, it focuses on the present moment of celebration, in which Christ meets with His people to nurture them and strengthen them in their sanctification. Third, it looks to the future, to the certain hope of their reunion with Christ in Heaven, where thy will participate in the banquet feast of the Lamb and His bride”

I have a day ahead of me, I want to live it in sacred space and sacred time; I want Him to be my all in all every minute, every tic-tac; here this place, this home is sacred because He has come. I don’t want to miss Him.

“In sacred space and sacred time Christians find the presence of the Holy. The bars that seek to shut out the transcendent are shattered, and the present time becomes defined by the intrusion of the holy. When we erect barriers to these intrusions, dikes to keep them from flooding our souls, we exchange the holy for the profane and rob both God of His glory and ourselves of His grace”

May our lives be flooded with His Holy presence.

Thanks to Tim Challies, who has put together this reading group, and thanks to you who read along! I look forward to the next book!

Image from my photography blog, have you visited it?

This post is linked to Fields of Faith, because I have found that my field of faith is here, today!

>Celebrating the Incarnation of our Lord -part IV-

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“In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. ” Luke 2: 1- 7 (ESV)

Mary is ready; her womb is heavy, her heart pounds hard, she knows the days are getting closer. She can’t no longer sleep well, and her lower back hurts. But she follows her husband; they travel to Bethlehem to fulfill an order of a man who did not know that his order was only the result of a Sovereign decree.

They journey under His sun to meet the greatest miracle of all, to see God’s promise fulfilled, to meet the Saviour of the world face to face. They walk a long walk with the Word of God ahead of them; leading them; Do they realize that the Word of God is in Mary’s womb?

They walk one more day, they knock one more door; they hope for one place to rest,  a place to lay the soon-to-be-born Baby’s head; but they found none.

The waiting is almost over for them, the Advent is almost over for us; we have meditated, we have read, we have pondered; we have studied what this magnificent word Incarnation means. We want to see Him; O how we long for His presence!

Today, I feel like Mary, full of Him, full of awe. I don’t have the Son of God in my womb; I have Him in my heart; the Holy Spirit came to Mary once, but He dwells within me daily. The Word has been growing deep in me, changing me; I, too, walk under His sun expecting the day I will see Him face to face. Mary and Joseph were always led by God, day after day, they were led by the Spirit to meet their Saviour; so we are.

We, Christians, are like Mary, chosen by God to see Him one day face to face; to embrace His Grace, to behold His glory.

This Christmas, I am reminded that I am only on a daily journey; no matter how heavy the burden might be, how rough the road might be, no matter how many doors I knock and how many of them remain closed; His Word leads me, His holy Spirit dwells within me; Christ is being formed in me; I walk daily to the day I will see Him face to face.

Calvin’s words come to my heart and meet me this Advent season; he says of Mary,

“She should be to us a mirror of God’s mercy. For in mercy God chose us for Himself, sinners though we were, rescued us from the abyss of death and had compassion on us. Mary is thus set before us as an example to imitate. with her we acknowledge that we are nothing, that we count for nothing, and are utterly reliant on God’s goodness. That is how we can be Mary’s pupils, proving by our aptness that we have been attentive to her teaching” (1)

I pray that God will give us grace to magnify God our Saviour daily as we journey under His sun, led by His Holy Spirit; fed with His Word. O, that Christ may be formed in us!

How I long to walk full of Him until the day I see Him face to face in all His glory!

Merry Christmas, to you, my Christian friend!

(1) John Calvin, Songs of the Nativity; Selected Sermons on Luke 1& 2

>Joseph and Mary an Advent Scene -and my gift to you-

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>Isn’t is wonderful? Just look at them! I wonder; how was that journey like? One full of expectation, full of joy, full of weariness and I am sure one full of uncertainty too; after all, Joseph and Mary were humans, bound to their flesh, just like you and I.

May our journey to the manger be full of expectation!

The Baby Jesus was being formed in Mary’s womb; nine months of waiting…  I think of my own life. I pray that daily, on my way to heaven, Jesus may be formed in me too.

The journey is the same, full of joy, expectation, promises,  and weariness too.

But He is in me. I shall not fear.

I am reading this book, Songs of the Nativity; Selected Sermons on Luke 1 and 2 by John Calvin, and I would like to share with you few quotes from the first sermon:

“Our happiness is bound up with faith and faith itself is full acceptance of the promises of salvation contained in the gospel. On what, precisely, do these promises depend? On the fact that God forgives our trespasses and recognizes us as righteous, miserable sinners though we are”

“how is it possible for us to rejoice in God? The Virgin Mary supplies us with the answer when she says ‘in God my Saviour’. That is where our joy begins -with the assurance that God is for us a Saviour. The word “Saviour” does not mean that he comes to our aid once and once only, but that He will always take care of us and of our salvation until He has brought it to fulfillment. We may, indeed, be replete with all kinds of goods, and yet be powerless to rejoice in God. Just to feel joy is simplicity itself. That is what the children of this world do all the time. But to rejoice in God is impossible until we experience the love He has for us, and until we know that He will not desert us but will lead us on to the end… So however many troubles and trials may beset us, whatever sorrows and vexations we may feel. God’s peace is bound to prevail. Nothing should stop us; rejoicing in Him”

Dear friends, thank you for sojourning with me! I love each one of you and I am grateful for you!

Thank you for coming, for reading my words, thank you for your comments, and most of all,; thank you for your friendship.

My little Christmas gift for you, dear readers, is this; I took a series of beautiful pictures of Mary and Joseph on their frail journey to Bethlehem; and, well, you can download them and use them as you wish! You can print any of them, or use them on your blog entries, or as desktops, etc… You can find the whole series at my photography blog, My Daily Journey-through my lens–

May His grace abound as we journey daily on our way to Heaven!

>A Manger and a Cross

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You laid aside your crown, and your royalty, O King, O Jesus.
You came to save. You did not have to come, yet you came.
The manger, and the nativity set; 
the Advent and the carols; 
the gifts and lights and Christmas trees and Posadas are without meaning if we do not raise our eyes.
You came as a baby but you came to grow and obey; heal and love; restore and touch; serve and die.
You came to die, to pay a price, to fulfill an eternal purpose, to redeem your own people.
You came to die a painful death. You came and my sins you bore on that cross.
You died and rose again victoriously.
A baby in a manger is the beginning of a love story. 
It doesn’t end there. 
Let us raise our eyes and see the cross and an empty tomb.

“And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.”
I Corinthians 15: 14

We now decorate a tree to remember that you came as a baby, 
help me now see beyond the beautiful lights…
You were nailed to a wooden cross, a raw tree. 
A tree that you, the Word, created. 
A death tree which held your broken body.
Lord, help me learn that you have called me to die. 
Die to myself, die to the sins that still want to rule over me. 
Die in order to live. 
Help me walk beyond the manger to the cross and then see You sitted at the right hand of God.
I long for that day. 
Face to face.
Show me how to live dying. How to serve and serve and serve.
Let this Christmas be a time of change.
 Let the change start within me.

Image found @ My Daily Journey -through my lens.

>The Holiness of God – Chapter Ten- and Christmas-

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“When I consider your heavens, 

the work of your fingers, 
the moon and the stars, 
which you have set in place, 
what is the man that you are mindful of him, 
the son of man that you care for him? 
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings 
and crowned him with glory and honor” 
Psalm 8:3- 5 ESV

The chapter is entitled, Looking Beyond Shadows, and the Bible verse above is the starting point.  I have never thought what Dr. Sproul points out to us here, listen to him:

“These {Psalm 8: 3-5} were not the sentiments of a professional astronomer or a primitive astrologer. They were the reflections of an ordinary person who was contemplating his small place in a vast universe. The psalmist had no concept of an expanding universe that contained billions of stars and innumerable galaxies. He had no thoughts of exploding novae or of spiral nebulae. He had never heard of the Big-Bang cosmology. From his vantage point in space and time, the sky appeared to be a doomed canopy whose luminaries were perhaps only a few miles high in the sky”



I can not but put together this chapter with all the meditations I have been reading concerning the Incarnation of our Lord. 


This is what we should ponder about this season… “What is man that you are so mindful of Him?”

“With the meager resources the psalmist had when ge gazed into the night sky of Palestine, he was overwhelmed by the weighty sense of contrast between the magnificence of the heavens and the reality obscurity and insignificance of his own life. By considering the start, he was forced to ask the ultimate question: ‘What is man that you are mindful of Him?'”

This is where I see the connection… Why did You, O Lord, choose to come to rescue us… me?

Maybe I am starting to understand…

“Perhaps the psalmist was able to perceive something to which we have become almost completely blind. Perhaps it was because the psalmist could see past the stars and the moon to the ONe who set them in the heavens in the first place”

Yes, O Lord, help me see beyond the shadows; through the stars and the ordinary; Help me see you!

These words I read and re-read, these words say s much about me.

“We are creatures who prefer life in the cave to the full light of the blazing sun. The glory of God is all around us. We cannot miss it. However, we not only fail to stop and smell the flowers, but we also fail to notice the glory of the flowers’ Maker.


Indeed the featured presentation in te theater of divine majesty in which we walk daily is God’s glory. The Psalmist declares that the sky and all of nature sing out God’s glory and majesty”

This is the Holy One who was indeed mindful of his creatures and came to them. The creature became creature. The Holy One came in flesh.

But we cannot see beyond shadows if we haven’t been  regenerated by the Holy Spirit. We are not able to see beyond the beauty of the world around us, we are not be able to see  beyond the stars or Christmas lights; we are not able to hear beyond Christmas carols or the beautiful sound of ocean waves crashing against huge rocks; we are not able to see His holiness, His Glory beyond shadows if we have not been born of the spirit. If our eyes have not be opened to see and our ears have not been opened to hear. We desperately need Him.

“Shadows in a cave are given to change. They dance and flicker with ever-changing shape and brightness. To contemplate the truly holy and to go beyond the surface of creaturely things, we need to get out of our self- made cave and walk in the glorious light of God’s holiness”

Walking out from shadows…

Thanks to Tim Challies for choosing this book.

>Celebrating the Incarnation of our Lord – Quotes that Nourish-

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The Nativity; Camillo Boccaccino. 16th Century

I read last week while on our vacation to the beach two little books, one is Martin Luther’s Christmas Book; the other by Augustine of Hippo, Sermons to the People: Advent, Christmas, New Year Epiphany.  I enjoyed them both, but I certainly enjoyed more Martin Luther’s book. (Augustine, talks about his belief of Mary being always virgin, something the Bible doesn’t say)

So I have chosen from these two books my quotes for today. Hope you enjoy reading them and find some nourishment for your soul.

“It was for you, my dear Brothers and Sisters, that God was made man. If He hadn’t been born in our time, you’d still be sleeping the sleep of death. If He hadn’t donned the same fatal flesh that Adam had, you’d never have been liberated from the sin of the flesh. If this Mercy hadn’t happened to you, Perpetual Misery would possess you whole and entire. If He hadn’t come to die the death for you, you wouldn’t have been born again. If He hadn’t propped you up, you’d have flopped yourselves down. Quite simply put, if He hadn’t come, you’d be dead as a doornail.” St Augustine.

“Is there no hope at all? “Not really” would seem to be the answer, except perhaps for the grace of the Incarnation.” St. Augustine
“Christian teaching is that in Christ God became flesh. Compared with that, no particular miracle matters much. If one could but believe that God lay in the manger, one could let go the star and the angel’s song and yet keep the faith.” From the Introduction to Luther’s Book.

“‘If only I had been there! How quick I would have been to help the Baby! I would have washed his linen. How happy I would have been to go with the shepherds to see the Lord lying in the manger!’ Yes, you would” You say that because you know how great Christ is, but if you had been there at that time you would have done no better than the people of Bethlehem. Childish and silly thoughts are these! Why don’t you do it now? You have Christ in your neighbor. You ought to serve him, for what you do to your neighbor in need you do to the Lord Christ himself.” Martin Luther

“Next to faith this is the highest art- to be content with the calling in which God has placed you. I have not learned it yet.” Martin Luther

“This is the way to observe this feast -that Christ may be formed in us. It is not enough that we should hear his story if the heart be closed. I must listen, not only to a history, but to a gift.” Martin Luther

“{H}e is called Jesus, meaning a Saviour who helps his people to turn and be saved. we have often explained and explain again, how to understand the Kingdom of our Lord; how to distinguish the spiritual and the temporal realms; that this Lord Christ does not build castles, towns, and villages like an emperor, king, or elector of Saxony, or even like me in my own household, but he saves his people from their sins. This is a fair, dear, and precious assurance to troubled and tormented consciences laden with sins, that to them and to us all a Child is born who will rule and vindicate, who will help and not destroy, murder, strangle, or kill” Luther


“The sum of it is  all here: ‘Unto you is born this day… a Saviour” Luther





Under His Sovereign Hand,