Down to Earth

      In October 1914, a man by the name of Thomas Mott Osborne entered Auburn Prison in upstate New York, and like all the other prisoners, he was photographed, fingerprinted, stripped of his possessions, issued a set of grays, and led to a cell, four feet wide by seven and a half feet long and seven and a half feet tall. The only difference between prisoner 33,333x and the other 1,329 inmates was the issue of freedom. On his command, he could leave the prison anytime he desired. 
 

     After his appointment to Governor Sulzer’s State Commission on Prison Reform, Osborne made it his mission to live as one of the inmates, study their experience, and emerge as their advocate. He voluntarily laid aside his freedom to experience life behind bars. He slept in a dank, drafty cell just like theirs. He ate their food and labored as they did. He even endured their most dreaded punishment, a night in “the box.” While he could order his own release at any time, he was nevertheless confined. He wrote, “I am a prisoner, locked, double locked. By no human possibility, by no act of my own, can I throw open the iron grating which shuts me from the world into this small stone vault. I am a voluntary prisoner, it is true; nevertheless even a voluntary prisoner can’t unlock the door of his cell.”

     Just as Osborne was at once free yet confined to prison, Jesus was omnipotent yet helpless as an infant, dependent even upon his mother’s milk for survival. In coming to earth, Jesus set aside His rightful entitlements of deity to become the least privileged of people—born among the poorest of the poor. In so doing, He came to this earth not just to save the world from their sins but to walk in their shoes, to eat their food, to labor as they do, and to emerge as their advocate for all of eternity. This Christmas season, celebrate the birth of Jesus and remember He understands what your going through. He has been here and He knows what it feels like. The God we celebrate truly is Down to Earth. Merry Christmas.