Imagine the scene.
The people of Babel had a rather ambitious construction project underway. They were building a city with a tower that would reach to the heavens. Not just a tall building. Not merely an impressive monument. They wanted to make a name for themselves, to establish something so extraordinary that it would reach right up into God’s neighborhood.
I wonder how proud they must have been as the tower grew taller. Brick upon brick, level upon level, reaching ever higher toward the sky. Perhaps they stood at its base, craned their necks, and marveled at what they had accomplished.
And then comes one of my favorite little moments of understated humor in the Bible.
But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. (Genesis 11:5)
Did you catch that?
Humanity was building a tower to reach the heavens, something they apparently considered a monumental achievement. But God had to come down to see it.
I can’t help smiling at the picture. All that effort. All that ambition. All those bricks. And from heaven’s perspective, God still had to stoop down to take a look.
There’s certainly a lesson about human pride in this story. The people wanted to make a name for themselves. They imagined they could reach heaven on their own terms, perhaps even rival the greatness of God. And as the story unfolds, God interrupts their plans, confuses their language, and scatters them across the earth.
But for our Sunday Wonder, I’d like to linger over something else.
The Lord came down.
Think about that for a moment. The God who spoke the heavens and earth into existence, who set the stars in their places and filled the oceans with life, took notice of what was happening on one little patch of ground.
He came down.
And the more I think about it, the more I realize this isn’t an isolated moment in Scripture. It’s part of a beautiful pattern that runs throughout the biblical story.
In the opening chapters of Genesis, God is pictured walking in the garden, calling out to Adam and Eve after they’ve hidden themselves among the trees. Later, when Moses is tending sheep in the wilderness, God meets him in the extraordinary sight of a bush that burns without being consumed. At Mount Sinai, God descends upon the mountain to meet the people he has delivered from Egypt.
Again and again, the God of heaven makes himself known to people on earth. He doesn’t remain some distant, unreachable mystery, indifferent to the lives unfolding below.
And then we come to Bethlehem.
The apostle John describes what may be the most astonishing expression of this pattern in all of Scripture:
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. (John 1:14)
Read that again.
The Word became flesh. The eternal God entered the very world he created. Not merely to observe humanity from a distance, but to live among us. To experience hunger and weariness, friendship and rejection, laughter and tears. To know firsthand the joys and sorrows of being human.
At Babel, humanity tried to build its way into heaven.
But in Jesus, heaven came to us.
I find that extraordinary. And I find it especially comforting when I think about how easily we can turn our relationship with God into another tower-building project.
We construct towers of religious activity, hoping somehow to earn his approval. We pile up good intentions and promises to do better. We try to climb above our mistakes, our regrets, our weaknesses, and the things about ourselves we’d rather nobody knew.
Sometimes we convince ourselves we’re making progress. Other times, we look up at how far we still have to go and wonder whether we’ll ever get there. And some of us have stopped climbing altogether.
Maybe we’ve been told too many times that we’re not good enough. Maybe we’ve stumbled so often that another attempt seems pointless. Maybe life has simply become so heavy that we don’t have the strength to reach for one more rung.
But here’s the wonder I hope we won’t miss: God’s love has never depended on our ability to climb high enough to reach him.
That’s the beauty of grace. We don’t have to construct a tower impressive enough to catch God’s attention. We don’t have to get everything right before he’ll draw near. We don’t have to somehow rise above every struggle before we’re worthy of his love. He will be our High Tower.
In Jesus, God has already come to us.
Perhaps that’s where worship begins. Not with our accomplishments or our ability to make something impressive of ourselves, but with the overwhelming realization that the God of all creation would come near to people like us.
So this Sunday, perhaps we can set aside our ladders and simply wonder.
The God who made the heavens has never been too great to come near. The distance between heaven and earth has never been too great for his love.
And in Jesus, he came all the way to us.
Now that’s something worth worshiping.
Please comment!