Most religious perspectives (sometimes even Christians) think about religion as the manner in which we try to find God, attempt to know God, strive to reach God, or venture to make ourselves somehow pleasing to God.
I remember being in youth group and learning about how sin creates a chasm that we cannot get over to get to God, except that the Cross makes it possible to us.
It's a helpful image. But it doesn't tell the whole story. Because even before the cross, God comes to us. This is the mystery of Christmas. In the most unexpected way, as a vulnerable, needy baby, he arrives. The one without whom nothing was made rips apart whatever separates us from God and steps into our world. It's such a miraculous thing that the Angels turn their attention away from the glory of God's throne to sing to the glory of a tiny child. And the shepherds and wise men travel to worship–to WORSHIP–a baby.
It's an incomprehensible miracle, how a God who cannot be contained by the heavens confines himself to the body of a baby that can be held in one of Joseph's rough hands. All of the universe is insufficient to clothe him, and yet there he is swaddled up in a feed trough.
And in doing so, he reveals the very character and love of God to us. God doesn't leave us alone in our vulnerability, waiting for us to find some secret path to him. He comes and shows himself to us. And makes space, by his grace, that we might become like him in love and in glory.
If you're looking for God, take heart. He has already come looking for you.
O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Immanuel.
