Can't get away from it....

My son sends me a text... Hey today at school "Billy" and I talk about church and he says he doesn't go to church, so I said we could get him a thing for every Sunday morning At first, I didn't understand what Sam was talking about. He was referring to his friend who does not go to church. When I got home and we were talking about his day at school, he was interpreting his text for me. I don't believe I am the only parent who has to have these daily interpretations. He basically was saying since "Billy" doesn't go to church we could get him some Bibles for his family and bring church to him. This, of course, is without any kind of permission or acknowledgement from the parents....but nevertheless, awesome! Images of Sam and I showing up at this family's door on Sunday and barging in to have church with them was kinda fun to think about.... Sam didn't blink an eye, or try to think of a reason or "plan" to get him to come to church. The common sense of it all was obvious to him...but still hard for some of us to grasp, "Bring church to HIM"! As a parent, I was proud. As a Christian...convicted. You know, we can't get away from it. This whole thing is "Incarnational". Is that a word? If not, maybe that is the point. Words need to be fleshed out or this whole thing is bunk. Jesus didn't bring us to Himself before he came down to us. It is amazing when you read the scriptures with the theme of incarnation running through your mind. Try it...IT will start to revolutionize the way you walk with Christ...and disrupt the way you walk here on earth. I think of two examples of this most passionate theme in scripture.... Elisha experienced incarnation in a very interesting way. The woman who was promised a son by Elisha has come back to him in distress. The son, the apple of her eye, is now dead. Elisha, seeing the distress and desperateness of the woman, with no hesitation sends Gehazi to raise the boy up. Gehazi runs as fast as he can to the boy and lays Elisha's staff on the boy's face. And you know what happened? "Nothin'!" (you have to say this like De Niro in the "Untouchables"). Gehazi comes back and tells Elisha that he is still dead. So Elisha goes and lays his body...mouth to mouth...nose to nose...hand to hand....feet to feet....right on that dead boy. Then the dead boy sneezed on him and opened his eyes! Elisha should have known this was the only thing that would have worked. His mentor, Elijah, did the same thing to raise a boy back to life. Even though the methods of miracles in the bible change from book to book, the lesson here is shouting through the ages as the church grapples with social media and a technological age that rivals personal touch. We've got to get dirty and physical. Sending "Elisha Staff" text messages through a wireless 4Gehazi network doesn't get the job done. We've got to get down on the dead...that's it. This whole thing is about a baby in a manger....and when we get away from that, we get away from the gospel. I will give the second example in the next blog post. Can you give me an example of Incarnation in the Bible? Shout it out to me, or better yet, deliver it in person.