Impressing a deity

A few years ago I had the opportunity to spend two months in Kenya doing missions work. In the small town where we spent the main portion of our time, we decided to go for one of the nicer hotels. It was a relatively new establishment, with prices that by Norwegian standards were still very affordable.

In Norway, we have certain expectations when we enter into a nice hotel. For example, you'd expect that the steps in a staircase are of roughly the same height. Not so in Kenya. There each step was whatever height they felt like building it that day. When we entered into the bathroom we expected the tiles to be arranged into straight lines. There, the mere presence of tiles was plenty impressive. They would make the walls look nicer by painting the lower part in a different color from the upper part, and it took Norwegian eyes to even notice that the height of the lower part fluctuated wildly across the wall.

Of course all of these superficial observations driven by western vanity have no true significance in the big picture. But they do point out an interesting facet of human nature; that two men can look at the same thing, and depending on what they're accustomed to one can be wildly impressed while the other will shake his head and snicker.

I know someone who from eternity past reigned with his Father in a kingdom that was flawless. A place where nothing had ever seen decay, and no object ever got a dent or a scratch. A place where every smallest detail was handmade by God, and every curve on every blade of grass reflected his endless glory. The kind of place where you could pick up a rock from the ground and be brought to tears by the mere perfection of it, and wherever you turn them, your eyes would be filled with sights so glorious that you would have a hard time holding back from singing improvised songs of praise and worship to the Creator of it all.

Yet this person that I know, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Can you imagine what it would be for someone who existed eternally in perfection to come down to this fallen earth? To lay down his omnipotence and subject himself to corruption and death? If the contrast between the wealth of Norway and the poverty of Kenya stood out to me, imagine how unimpressed he must be with even the finest this earth has to offer. Will he not look at everything I find magnificent and amazing and think to himself that it is only a faint shadow of what he once created it to be?

While the cross was the pinnacle of Jesus' sacrifice, we often miss that even being present on this earth would have been a sacrifice much greater than we could ever imagine. And when we do that, then at the same time we deprive ourselves of imagining the glory and the grandeur of heaven.