God in the Physical?

Mount Arbel, Israel
I have always been amazed at how Jesus lived life. The Bible teaches us that he is the perfect example of how to live life well.  Colossians records that all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in bodily form.  In bodily form! God came down and experienced this earth through a body—through the person and life of Jesus Christ.  With this flesh came the burdens of the flesh but also the joys of the flesh.  Today we climbed Mount Arbel, the mountain talked about several times in the Gospels that borders the sea of Galilee.  This mountain is beautiful for many reasons but perhaps my favorite is because of what it tells us about Jesus—and how to be human.

Several times in the Gospels we are told that Jesus removed himself from the crowds, and his ministry, to pray on this mountain to God.  What an experience to be on this mountain today! To know that Jesus saw with his eyes the hills that I was looking at! To know that Jesus felt the breeze from the sea on his face, that he saw the flowers covering the hills, that he sweated on his way up the impressive mountain, all these things matter to the Christian story!  Jesus knew what it meant to be human. Jesus embraced it! The physical aspect of Jesus’life was not something that he bypassed, it was something in which he used to gain communion with his Father. Perhaps we cannot classify Jesus as an introvert or extrovert but surely he knew when he needed to withdraw to talk with his Father. That mountain is where some of this reflection took place.  Jesus shows us that being human means finding the Father in all things, including the physical.

The reality is that the physical matters.  God in the physical matters. He chose to be human. He chose to live in Galilee. The fact that Jesus walked into the synagogue in Capernaum and read from the scroll of Isaiah proclaiming that the words they heard had been fulfilled as they listened to him, matters.  It all matters.  Jesus was not just a spirit roaming around the world. As I walked through the Galilee today (ya incredible) I could not stop thinking about the fact that Jesus walked here too.  That he lived here. That the God of the universe saw fit to come live with us.  The impact of seeing these places that the God of the universe saw through human eyes—it’s something I will never forget.  Nor do I think that it is something that God wants us to forget either.  Jesus lived this life, he lived it well, he lived it in communion with the Father in the physical, and he challenges us to do the same. Jesus offers the ability to live a life in fellowship with the Triune God not apart from the physical, but through the physical.  This is the life Jesus modeled. What an incredible blessing to see the places where Jesus himself had to negotiate his life.  Grateful to be encouraged to do the same—in my own physical surroundings.

-Robert