Nothing is Really That Remote. Psalm 89.

Statue of Liberty During Pink Sunrise. Copyright Matthew Chimera Photo. Prints available online.

“I can’t believe it. I mean, there she is! It’s really her!”

My wife was so excited. We were bouncing gently on the bow of a Circle Line Tour boat in New York Harbor. Everyone around us had camera phones pointing at the same thing—the Statue of Liberty.

“Yeah,” I laughed. “It’s really her.”

“She’s so beautiful. Wow. I mean, she’s really real, you know what I mean?”

I knew exactly what she meant. It was Wendy’s first trip to New York and she had been saying the same thing everywhere we went: there it is. It’s really real. I’m really here. I can’t believe it.

As a trip planner, I could not have been happier. My wife is always enthusiastic, but this was special, even for her. She was beside herself, amazed and delighted to be seeing things in person that she had been seeing on television or in movies all her life.

Travel will do that for you. I remember walking around Mount Vernon as a child and thinking George Washington walked here. George Washington probably held this banister. George Washington might have sat in this chair. George Washington might have grabbed this doorknob. I was amazed too. It is remarkable the way history comes to life when you travel.

The truth is, history is never as far away as we think.

You could board a plane today and be standing at Pearl Harbor or Ford’s Theater in a few hours. Better yet, you could go to a library (or look online) and instantly read the words of Aristotle or Homer, men who have been dead thousands of years. Nothing is ever as far away, as removed or remote as it seems. With a cellphone in hand, you can instantly read English translations of nearly every book in history that matters. Moreover, you can see pictures in seconds of every place that matters, or every work of art that matters.

Nothing is really that remote.

Furthermore, when you dabble in genealogy, you discover again that nothing is really that remote: not history, not famous places, and not famous people.*

God is certainly not remote.

“Thy seed will I establish forever, and build up thy throne to all generations … I have found David my servant. With my holy oil have I anointed him … Also, I will make him my firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth … My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips. Once have I sworn by my holiness that I will not lie unto David. His seed shall endure forever, and his throne as the sun before me. It shall be established forever as the moon, and as a faithful witness in heaven” Psalm 89:4,20,27,34-38.

God promised to establish the throne of David forever in 2 Samuel 7:12-16. But how? Although there were exceptions, David’s descendants grew more evil and more idolatrous with each succeeding generation. But God was not depending on these earthly kings. Instead, God sent His Son, and God’s Son would be the Holy King whose kingdom would never end. Think about this: Jesus was born into the “House and Line of David” Luke 2:4. In fact, there are solid arguments that not only Joseph, the adopted father of Jesus, but also Mary was from the line of David.

The point is, Jesus walked among us. In the Son of Man, God Himself walked among us, living as one of us. He had parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters. Jesus had a family tree. He was related by blood to thousands of distant cousins all across Israel and the world. After all, he descended from Noah. In fact, this One Paul described as the Second Adam literally descended from the first Adam—as did we all.

Jesus walked among us.

He drank from the rain that falls on the earth today. He breathed the air we breathe. He ate fish from the same waters, ate bread made from the same wheat. He sweated in the heat and shivered in the cold and lived a life not as different from yours as you probably think.

That is the essence of the Incarnation, after all: God, the Creator, became Man, a creation. He ate and slept and laughed and lived a human life. He was one of us. God Himself became one of us.

Nothing is as remote as it seems.

God is never remote and is with you right now as you read this.

“For He is not far from any of us, for in Him we live, and move, and have our being … for we are also His offspring” Acts 17:27-28.

AΩ.

* If you can provide a few generations of your family tree, a website called relativefinder.org can connect you to famous people living and dead—though perhaps no more closely related than seventh cousins (a pool that can include 100,000 people). Though the relationship may be distant—and though you will never be able to verify all the parent-child connections involved—there is something interesting about considering that you might be related to this handful of famous people you have never met. After all, someone must be related to them, right?