Image of the invisible (2020)

Over this long season, vacillating between the need for life-saving isolation and life-giving community, there is an innate ache to be seen and heard, to experience real, felt presence. It only grows stronger with every day apart from friends and family, from coworkers, and for those seeking after Jesus, from the church. This feeling of absence can do one of two things: it can either increase our fondness for what we miss, or it can obscure and dim the memory of what we've lost.

This is why the arrival of the God-Man, Jesus of Nazareth, is so important. Jesus, the word made flesh, the light that shines in the darkness, born into the same ache and suffering, reveals a much greater reality, a reality hidden from our senses, a reality where God is easily seen and known, and this larger reality is only accessible through this limited physical one. Or, as the church Father Athanasius once said, God became what we are so that we might become what he is.