The smallness of God.

Icon of the Nativity of Christ, Novgorod, 15th cent. (source).

For your continued prayerful reflection on the Feast of the Nativity, I'd like to call your attention to this recent post by Orthodox priest and blogger Father Stephen Freeman, who offers some timely words on the smallness of God:

We draw near to the Feast of our Lord's Nativity, and I cannot fathom the smallness of God. Things in my life loom so large and every instinct says to overcome the size of a threat by meeting it with a larger threat. But the weakness of God, stronger than death, meets our human life/death by becoming a child - the smallest of us all - man at his weakest - utterly dependent.

And His teaching will never turn away from that reality for a moment. Our greeting of His mission among us is marked by misunderstanding, betrayal, denial and murder. But He greets us with forgiveness, love, and the sacrifice of self.

This way of His is more than a rescue mission mounted to straighten out what we had made crooked. His coming among us is not only action but also revelation. He does not become unlike Himself in order to make us like Him. The weakness, the smallness, the forgiveness - all that we see in His incarnation - is a revelation of the Truth of God. He became the image of Himself, that we might become the image [that] we were created to be.

To read the rest, click here. Christ is born! Glorify him! AMDG.