The Visible

When we turn from the pages of the writings of Moses, the prophets, and wisdom writers, we find ourselves in the different world of the Gospels.  Everything is different.  Oh, it is still true that people are still being called to holy work, but the means of the calling is drastically different.  No one is being called through a bush, or by a voice, but by the Visible One come to live among us.  In the Old Testament it is the calling of the Invisible One that is heard, but in the Gospels it is the call of the Visible One, the One who has a face and lives among us.   

Who among us can imagine what it must have been like to look into the eyes of Christ, or to have our ears hearing His voice, or actually experiencing the feel of His hand upon our shoulder?  Who among us can imagine a moment of seeing what could not possibly be seen, or of looking into the face of the One whose face demands our turning away from it, or of knowing that the body next to us is the very body of Christ present in our midst?   Always the spoken holy word had come from the realm of the invisible, but all that changed in a moment when Jesus breathed that first breath in Bethlehem.  

As He walked the roads of Galilee and encountered soul after soul and spoke those words of calling, those words that invited following, no one had to look for the One whose voice was heard.  The Invisible had become the Visible.  And for a moment no bush, no lightning and thunder, no earthquake, no smoke and fire, no prophet, and no Temple was needed to hear the Voice of the One who called.  The One who called was there in the flesh among them and everything was suddenly different and unlike it had ever been.