John 1: 14-18

Okay, I got a little stuck writing this post. Not because this passage isn't profound enough, but because I suffered from a case of the "ordinaries" yesterday. I want to be really profound when I write. But as my dear friend D always reminds me, "You're not God. Let God be God and you be you."

So here's what I kept pondering yesterday. I am totally hooked on the reality show, The Bachelor. Why, I have no idea. Because of it's romantic sounding premise or because it's usually a train wreck or some weird combination of both. I'm an arm chair observer of human nature. And while contemplating this passage what kept occurring to me is that what John was trying to get across was that Jesus was the Real Deal.

You think you've met glorious, beautiful, graceful, gracious people. But no matter how good they look, or how wonderful they appear - if you scratch below the surface, you get ugly. Sometimes, real ugly. Like the folks on The Bachelor. They all look beautiful, gracious, glamorous. And then they open their mouths. Or someone makes them mad. See just how gracious they are then.

But not Jesus. Not only did He have God's authority - the law which God gave to Moses - he had God's character. All of it. In fact, despite artists' renditions over the years, the Bible tells us that Jesus (outwardly) was nothing special to look at.

Isaiah 53:2 "He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him."

And yet people followed him in droves to hear him speak, to receive just a touch from him, to be present at a house where he'd been invited as a dinner guest. God writing with his finger his law on tablets of stone is more than a little awe-full and intimidating. God walking around with skin on was so popular 4 men once dug through a roof to get their paralyzed friend to him.

I need to keep reminding myself that God is both - the glory and the grace. Without the grace that God showed us in and through Jesus, all we have is more rules to follow. I have to remind myself (sometimes daily) that in his earthly lifetime, the only people Jesus got angry with were the hypocrites (like the Pharisees and the money changers). All who came to him in faith, received grace.