Jesus In My Purse

My two year old Samantha just adores the nativity scene we put out for Christmas. She loves to take all the characters and line them up on the floor and just smile at them. She also likes to shuffle them around in the "manger" while mumbling under her breath...playing house I suppose. It's pretty sweet.

Well, this morning I caught her trying to take the baby Jesus ("Yeeyah" as she calls him) and put him in her little purple purse along with her "cool dude" shades and Batman phone. I'm working really hard to make sure that none of the figures from our nativity set is lost in the abyss that is our playroom, so I said, "No, Sammy. You can not put baby Jesus in your purse."

Did I really just utter those words?

After giggling to myself, I realized how profound those words really were. OK, well, maybe not profound...but interesting at least!

It got me thinking about how we so often try to "put Jesus in our purse". We try to put him in a nice tidy package that we can fully comprehend and understand. We try to define HIM...the great I AM, the Everlasting and Almighty Creator of the Universe...and it just can't be done!

As I contemplated all of this, I felt drawn to my Bible (I am so incredibly thankful that God put all the important stuff on paper for me!). I wanted to be reminded of who God is. Here are some of the words that blessed me this morning:

"In the beninning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded. But you remain the same, and your years will never end." Psalm 102:25-27

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John 1:1

"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father full of grace and truth." John 1:14

Amen!

When I really try to get my brain around who He is and why He came...I just can't. In my humanity, I just can not fathom eternity. I can not fathom a being so marvelous that all He had to do was speak, and the universe was brought forth. I can not fathom a love so great as to bring God to earth to die for me. I can not fathom it, but I accept it. I accept that God just IS...He is who He is regardless of my inability to fully comprehend Him. As a wise friend once reminded me, (roughly quoting here) "If God is small enough for me to understand, He's not big enough for me to worship."

So I praise God today for being too big for me to understand. Jesus doesn't belong in my purse anyway...