Why Don't You Lead Already?

"For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders..." (Isa. 9:6)

Jesus... you were born with authority, the power to rule, the right to be king, to ability to overthrow governments and uphold justice and righteousness. So, what happened? Why don't you get to it? Why don't you just take control? Step in? Use your supernatural abilities? Change the created order? Rule, why don't you!

Oh, wait... I think maybe that is what they were shouting about on Palm Sunday. Jesus didn't seem to be ruling the way they wanted. There was no revolution. No end of Roman oppression. No visible immediate kingdom here on earth, at least nothing that we could recognize.

God doesn't seem to rule that way. So frustrating at times! And yet... to realize that God has entrusted so much to us, that God desires to work in and through us, that somehow God and I, we are in this together. Perhaps that was part of the point of the incarnation? That we are in this together. That God loves us, trusts us, wants us to live into who we have been created to be... humanity in God's image, male and female, with power and dominion, to lead all of us under God's loving care.

All authority rests upon the baby Jesus... and he uses it to empower us.