Te tamari no atua, Paul Gauguin, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
You became human, really human.
While we endeavor to grow out of our humanity,
to leave our human nature behind us,
You became human,
and we must recognize that You want us also to be human –
really human.
Whereas we distinguish between the godly and the godless,
the good and the evil, the noble and the common,
You love real human beings without distinction. . . .
You take the side of real human beings and the real world
against all their accusers. . . .
But it’s not enough to say that You take care of human beings.
This sentence rests on something
infinitely deeper and more impenetrable,
namely, that in the conception and birth of Jesus Christ,
You took on humanity in bodily fashion.
You raised your love for human beings
above every reproach of falsehood and doubt and uncertainty
by yourself entering into the life of human beings as a human being,
by bodily taking upon yourself
and bearing the nature, essence, guilt, and suffering of human beings.
Out of love for human beings, You became a human being.
You do not seek out the most perfect human being
in order to unite with that person.
Rather, You take on human nature as it is.
after Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906 – 1945, German theologian and martyr
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Look! The virgin will conceive a child!
She will give birth to a son,
and they will call him Immanuel,
which means ‘God is with us.’
She will give birth to a son,
and they will call him Immanuel,
which means ‘God is with us.’
prayer & verse 
