It Was Never Plan B
We come to the manger like people arriving late to a story.
The world broke, so God came.
That’s the version we know.
That’s the part we tell.
But Christmas is not divine improvisation.
It’s the revelation of what has always been true.
It’s the unveiling of a God who was already drawing close.
Before there was anything to fix, God was already near. Before shame, before hiding, before the long history of fear and failure, Scripture tells us that God walked with human beings in the quiet of the day, simply with them.
This wasn’t emergency.
This was communion.
This wasn’t duty.
This was delight.
Nearness wasn’t a response to the Fall.
Nearness was the point all along.
And when we ran from that nearness, when the communion fractured and the world grew sharp with sorrow, God did not retreat. He moved closer.
A pillar of fire, so his people wouldn’t be alone in the dark.
A voice in a bush, calling a beaten-down shepherd by name.
A tent in the center of the camp, so no one could say God lives far away.
A glory-filled Temple where holiness pressed so close it overwhelmed.
Again and again, God made the same move: toward.
And again and again, he was saying the same thing without quite using the words: I haven’t changed my mind about you.
So when John tells us that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, he’s not announcing a shift in God’s character. He’s announcing the deepest consistency in it.
The God who once lived in fire and cloud lives in skin and bone.
The God who once filled the Temple fits in a feeding trough.
The God whose voice shaped galaxies arrives as a cry in the night.
This is not a Plan B God. This is the God who was always on the way—on the way not back to where we started, but forward to where we were always meant to go.
And he does not come only to be near.
He comes to go all the way in.
Not just into our nature, but into our wounds.
Not just into our stories, but into their worst chapters.
Not just into our breath, but into our death.
That is what the Incarnation is.
The cross.
The empty tomb.
Not divine panic,
but divine faithfulness.
And still, if we’re honest, Christmas doesn’t always feel like nearness.
Sometimes it feels like you’re singing carols with a knot in your throat.
Sometimes it feels like setting a place at the table you wish you didn’t have to leave empty.
Sometimes it feels like standing at the sink when the house is finally quiet, wondering if God still sees what you’re carrying.
The gospel does not correct you for feeling that way.
It doesn’t rush you past the ache.
It says: God has already stepped into that room.
The one with the empty chair.
The one with the late-night questions.
The one where you carry what you don’t know how to name.
He is not far off, watching.
He is with you.
And he is not finished.
There is a day coming—truer than Christmas morning, steadier than the turning of the year—when the work of repair will finally be complete. When sin will loosen its grip. When death will give back what it stole. When every prayer that felt like it fell into the dark will rise into light.
And even then, the story will not end.
This was always the plan.
Life with God will not flatten into a frozen perfection.
It will open outward.
It will be an ascent without a summit—love deepening, joy widening, communion expanding forever into the infinite life of the One who always moves toward us.
So don’t look at the manger as a reaction to disaster. Look at it as the center of a story that began in joy and ends in joy, and is carried forward by mercy in between.
The manger wasn’t an interruption.
It was a revelation.
The God who walked with us before we ever fell
is the God who lay in the straw,
and he is the God who will dwell with us in glory.
He has come.
He will come again.
And he will never stop drawing near.1
These midweek devotionals aren’t sermons. They’re meant to complement the Sunday homily. I’ll share the sermon below after it’s preached:
Afterword: An Ascent Without a Summit
Some modern stories struggle to imagine eternity as good news. The final season of The Good Place famously portrays heaven as an endless vacation that eventually grows unbearable. Every pleasure becomes stale. Every experience repeats itself. In the end, the most merciful option is not more life, but oblivion. For many people, that conclusion feels strangely satisfying. After all, wouldn’t endless existence eventually get boring?
Jorge Luis Borges made a similar argument decades earlier in his short story “The Immortal.” A man unknowingly drinks from a stream that grants eternal life. At first, immortality feels like a miracle. But over time, urgency disappears. Desire evaporates. Without limits, nothing feels precious. Eternity becomes a kind of spiritual suffocation. When the man finally regains mortality, it feels like salvation.
I understand the fear behind those stories. Recently, I was given a handheld gaming device loaded with the arcade games I loved as a kid. The difference was that this time, I never needed quarters. Every time I failed, I could instantly start again. At first, it was exhilarating. But before long, I found myself bored. With no cost, no consequence, and no real risk, there was nothing left to conquer. Endless continuation turned out not to be the same thing as joy.
The Christian hope described in this devotional is pointing to something very different. Eternal life is not endless repetition, nor a party that eventually runs out of steam. It is not static perfection or infinite leisure. From the earliest days of the church, Christians have insisted that life with God is dynamic because God is infinite. Communion with God does not flatten desire; it deepens it. Joy does not thin out; it grows richer. Eternity is not the absence of limits, but an ever-expanding participation in the life of the One who never runs out.
This is what it means to say that life with God is an ascent without a summit. Not boredom without end, but growth without end. Not stasis, but movement. As Gregory of Nyssa once wrote, eternal life is “from beginning to beginning, by beginnings that never end.”
Love this!!