Sunday Hymn Post

The paradox of the Incarnation- "When Jesus entered this life as a human baby, men and women experienced the Presence of God. He was manifest in that human body; He was here, visibly and palpably.

The wonder of this goes on forever: The Author stepped onto his stage." ~from Wittingshire

The Great God of Heaven

The great God of Heaven is come down to earth,
His mother a virgin, and miraculous His birth;*
The Father eternal His Father alone:
He slept in the manger; He reigns on the throne.

Refrain

Then let us adore Him, and praise His great love:
To save us poor sinners He came from above.

A Babe on the breast of a maiden He lies,
Yet sits with the Father on high in the skies;
Before Him their faces the seraphim hide,
While Joseph stands waiting, unscared, by His side.

Refrain

Lo! here is Emmanuel, here is the Child,
The Son that was promised to Mary so mild;
Whose power and dominion shall ever increase,
The Prince that shall rule o’er a kingdom of peace.

Refrain

The Wonderful Counselor, boundless in might,
The Father’s own image, the beam of His light;
Behold Him now wearing the likeness of man,
Weak, helpless, and speechless, in measure a span.

Refrain

O wonder of wonders, which none can unfold:
The Ancient of Days is an hour or two old;
The Maker of all things is made of the earth,
Man is worshipped by angels, and God comes to birth:

Refrain

The word in the bliss of the Godhead remains,
Yet in flesh comes to suffer the keenest of pains;
He is that He was, and forever shall be,
But becomes that He was not, for you and for me.

Refrain


"Chesterton responded with Christian humanism to what he judged to be a serious breakdown of the fundamental moral suppositions deposited by biblical faith and the classical tradition. He believed that this declension was due to the loss of conviction in the culture about the reality of the Incarnation, that is of God truly having become a human being in Jesus Christ with all the import that that has for human existence. For Chesterton, the doctrine of the Incarnation is the hinge that holds together what is, for the Christian, a vision of the world that is essentially paradoxical. And he is astonishingly adept at employing this vision in his cultural criticism and Christian apologetics. The Incarnation sheds light where sin deceives and despair darkens the human horizon. Sin causes us to experience spirit in opposition to matter, faith in conflict with reason, life defeated by death. But the Incarnation reveals these apparent contradictions as paradoxes. Contradiction may signal futility, but paradox is pregnant with the possibility of resolution and harmony.

Paradox, says Chesterton, is the ally of Truth. The good news of the Christian Gospel is that God who is Spirit became flesh, infinite being became finite existence, the immortal One became mortal man in order that death might be undone and humanity might be drawn up into spiritual life. God in his being and act unties the deadly Gordian knot of sin. The errors of pagan religion and the falsehoods of secularism are exposed by the Incarnation and replaced by its truth in paradox. This divine and human truth opens a way to salvation for man other than an escape of the soul from matter and time or the desperate embrace of mere flesh and finitude in a courtship with personal extinction."
~Vigen Guroian

*I altered 'sinless is his birth' to 'miraculous his birth,' because, because, because.