The First and the Last

I'm happy to be the first follower with the full knowledge that the first shall be last and the last shall be first. We should get used to this kind of paradoxical language in John (light/darkness;blindness/insight;thirst/welling up;bread/eternal food). When Jesus says in John 8:58 "Before Abraham was, I am," we have the temporal/eternal paradox personified in him. We praise him every time we say the Gloria. Whenever we share his name, we are both fully in time and lifted out of it. I'm not expressing myself very well, perhaps because words are inadequate. The "I am" exists before the "past, present and future," both in time and out of time, fully at every moment and yet waiting for his glory to be fully revealed. Although we are almost at the beginning of Lent, I am still stuck on Christmas. I think of the juxtaposition of the Wise Men and the baby Jesus. Wisdom=big thoughts, big words, stars, heights, power. Baby Jesus=tears, cries, smiles, inarticulate, vulnerable, helpless, cows lowing. He allows every birth to be special, to be an incarnation, even our own.