Flesh & Blood

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets: I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them" (Matthew 5:17).

I've picked up several of my friends mannerisms along the way: I smack my tongue a little like Lavonne when I talk of something tasty, I can wiggle my fingers when I look in the fridge like Sarah, and I sometimes catch one eyebrow going down when I'm thinking like Jade. People have a way of rubbing off on me.

I also happen (this seems like a tangent but it is not!) to like ideas. I enjoy abstract stuff, my definition of a happy day is a day I get to play around with a new idea.

But here's the deal, as happy as I am thinking about something. As much as I enjoy sitting in a corner and reading--I rarely find myself mimicking ideas. I mimic people. I'm more moved by watching a person cry over the loss of her home to a tornado than I am moved by reading that on average there are 800 tornadoes in the US every year.

So when Jesus said that he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. I find something powerful. He came to make what was abstract concrete. He came to give rules, propositions, pleas, prophecies, proverbs, psalms, praises--he came to give them all flesh. He is the embodiment of God's ideas. "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us" (John 1:14).