Betwixt and between

The Incarnation of Jesus tells me that this body life matters to God. What Jesus accomplished in the flesh has eternal and spiritual significance. God could simply have said to someone what it meant to believe and be saved but He didn't, He took the form of a middle eastern man 2000 years ago called Yeshua and lived among His creation for thirty years before revealing Himself and then only to a relatively few people. He got crossways with the people who were supposed to be his leading representatives and then ended up dying on a cross.

The miracles Jesus did were physical and temporal, healing, feeding, even raising from the dead. These all fixed problems related to this life but they were pointing to that other life, God-life as the source. People frequently remarked that nothing like what Jesus was doing had ever been done before in the healing of the blind man in John 9 and in the raising of Lazarus in John 11 for instance. They also noted that He didn't teach like others and that even His teaching had an authority they hadn't seen. All that should have pointed to that other realm.

We owe thanks for our lives to the one who created us. This life matters to us and the incarnation tells me that it matters to Him as well. We care about pain and suffering and we cry out for answers and the incarnation tells me that my pain matters to Him enough that He suffered more pain than I am ever likely to know, physically, emotionally (betrayal by those close to Him) and spiritually (My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?). He did all of this for us and to save us from eternal death and separation because we and our lives matter to Him enough to suffer in the flesh. We are but dust and to dust we shall return but what happens in between is incredibly important on an eternal and cosmic scale.