What was God thinking?

He gave up the glory of heaven for a stable. What was He thinking?

How many of us would make that choice? Would we choose to leave a glorious mansion for a drafty barn or a cardboard box under an overpass?

Would we trade a pillow-topped mattress with a warm down comforter for a rough blanket and straw that was meant to be fed to the livestock?

Would we trade a room smelling of the finest scented candles for a stable where the odor of the dung of livestock would overwhelm our senses?

Jesus did. He gave up the glory of heaven for a stable.

And He didn’t stop there.

He gave up the glory of heaven to live a rustic life. What was He thinking?

How many of us would make that choice? Would we choose to leave a mansion with all the modern conveniences available to step back in time, back into the Dark Ages? Or would we have chosen to wait a few hundred years for the world to become not quite so primitive? Or maybe we would have rejected the idea as ludicrous and below our social standing.

Would we trade luxury for poverty?

Jesus did. He gave up the glory of heaven to live a rustic life.

And He didn’t stop there.

He gave up the glory of heaven for rejection and death. What was He thinking?

He spent three years teaching His disciples and the people. In the end, one of His disciples sold Him out, and the world at large rejected Him.

They mocked Him. They beat Him. They hung Him on a cross to suffer unimaginable pain leading to His death.

How many of us would make that choice? Would we knowingly invest our lives to reach a people who we knew would reject us, betray us and kill us in the most horrendous fashion known to mankind?

We probably wouldn’t. But Jesus did. He gave up His life to make a way possible for mankind to be reconciled with His Heavenly Father, to make His Heavenly Father their Heavenly Father.

He gave up the glory of heaven for a stable, for poverty, for rejection and, ultimately, for death. What was He thinking?

He was thinking of … mankind. He was thinking of … us.

Now let’s reverse this. What about us? What are we thinking? What are we willing to give up … for Him.