Why the Incarnation matters
January 6, 2026 | Silver Spring, Maryland, United States | Shawn Boonstra
There is something hypnotic about mechanized travel: the pleasant hum of tires on pavement, the syncopated cadence of a train pushing through the night, the satisfying brown noise of a jet engine. For some, these are the sounds of escape, a lullaby for the journey.
They certainly were for Willard. As the number of miles between his third-class train car and the front grew, the sound of the steel wheels beneath him eventually began to drown out the agony he’d experienced in the trenches. He was filthy, sleep-deprived, and louse-ridden. He closed his eyes and imagined the soon-to-be realized luxuries that others take for granted: a razor, a bath, and a clean bed. He looked down at his tattered boots to see his toe poking through both his sock and the spot where the leather had started to pull away from the sole.
Maybe he’d get some new socks and boots, too.
He closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and smiled through heavy stubble for the first time in many months. Other passengers had left the seats next to him vacant, and although he knew it was likely because he smelled terrible, he was glad for it. Compared to the trenches, this might as well have been a spa.
The train began to slow. A station. As it pulled up to the platform, he cleared a spot in the condensation on the window with his sleeve. There were grim-faced officers waiting for the train, and one of them immediately entered Willard’s car. Determined footsteps suddenly stopped next to him. He glanced up. “Get your things,” the smartly dressed officer said. “They need you on the front.”
He thought about protesting, and then thought better of it. He grabbed his rucksack and followed the man out onto the platform, where other deflated-looking soldiers were starting to assemble. Hot, exhausted tears started to spill over his lower eyelids, promptly wiped away to prevent the others from seeing.
Going back? His shoulders slumped in defeat, and the tears became harder to hide.
Sometimes when our hopes are denied us, it’s frustrating. Other times it’s devastating. The movement that you and I inhabit was propelled to a global phenomenon by the latter. Exhausted believers, convinced that Jesus would return, began to sob as the early-morning light broke across the eastern horizon and Jesus had not appeared. They had been almost home, their hearts already having shed much of the pain of living in a broken world during the weeks leading up to October. The dawn slapped them with the reality that they would be returning to the front.
You and I occupy a movement that began just about like that. Exhausted disciples, convinced that Jesus would return, began to sob bitterly as morning light broke across the eastern horizon. They had been almost home, their hearts already shedding the pain of living in a broken world, convinced that they would see Christ. Instead, they were to remain on the front.
“And I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it,” John tells us of a vision he had 18 centuries previous. “It was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it my stomach was made bitter. And I was told, ‘You must again prophesy about many peoples and nations and languages and kings’ ” (Rev. 10:10, 11, ESV).
Historically speaking, it was not the first time God’s people had suffered such disappointment. “The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former,” God told His people through Haggai (Haggai 2:9, ESV). The first temple—Solomon’s—had been visited by the Shekinah glory:
“As soon as Solomon finished his prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple” (2 Chron. 7:1, ESV). If the glory of the second temple was to be greater, imagine the spectacle that might accompany its dedication?
It didn’t happen. In fact, the ark of the covenant was still hiding in whatever spot Jeremiah had chosen. There was no fire from heaven, no glorious cloud of God’s presence.
So did Haggai get it wrong? Hardly. The second temple was the place in which God would suddenly come closer to His people in a way that far exceeded His arrival at the Solomonic dedication: He came as a human being. He was dedicated at the temple as a genuine human infant, and would later appear in its courts as Israel’s most profound Teacher.
God in human flesh. We could not enter the veil to approach Him, so He stepped out to become one of us. That, to God’s way of thinking, was more glorious than the brilliant manifestation that drove the people of Israel to prostrate themselves in front of the first temple. In the sanctuary we had been invited to know God through the types and symbols He established; in the Incarnation He made Himself even more accessible.
Not only did it made God more understandable; the warmth of His presence evaporated our excuses. We cannot say that God doesn’t understand what it’s like to be here, because He clearly does. He has experienced hunger. He has been misunderstood. He has experienced loneliness, rejection, and pain. His own family refused to believe Him.
In many ways His life tracked like yours is tracking, complete with the profound disappointments that come from living in the fallout of Adam’s disobedience. Jesus is like us in very important ways—but He is also quite unlike us in others.[1]
Think back to the last time the floor was opened for prayer requests in either your church service or Bible study group. What percentage of requests were anchored in pain? How many were tied to personal frustration and disappointment? How many represented suffering? I’m sure people also offered gratitude and praise, but most of the time those items do not form the majority of the prayer list. And when we hear of someone else’s anguish, we are tempted to say, “I know how you feel.”
Grief counselors, you will notice, advise us not to say such things. Why? It’s because you can’t possibly know how they feel, even if you’ve experienced something similar. Unless you have an identical backstory and personality, you cannot imagine how devastation hits someone else. You may have also lost a family member, but yours was a source of love and support. Theirs was more complex; they represented pain and frustration, which delivers an entirely different set of emotions. Where your illness brought people closer to you, theirs provoked feelings of isolation. Your financial crisis eventually resolved; theirs ended in grinding, seemingly permanent poverty.
As much as we can empathize with people, we cannot slip into their existence to see it as they do. It’s not possible—with one notable exception. Our collective guilt and pain was poured out on the Son of man. “In the garden of Gethsemane,” we are told, “Christ suffered in man’s stead, and the human nature of the Son of God staggered under the terrible horror of the guilt of sin, until from His pale and quivering lips was forced the agonizing cry, ‘O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me’; but if there is no other way by which the salvation of fallen man may be accomplished, then ‘not as I will, but as thou wilt’ (Matthew 26:39).”[2]
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,” the Scriptures remind us, “but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15, ESV).
You really don’t know how I feel—not really. And I don’t understand how you feel—not really. But Jesus? He does. In fact, He understands it better than I do, and sees it in a way that the stain of sin on my heart prevents me from seeing. More than that, He has felt the shameful horror of my guilt in a way that I will not have to—thanks to His willingness to be my substitute.
A noted celebrity once said that there is something worse than feeling lonely: it is being in a room full of people who make you feel lonely. That, unfortunately, is the present lot of broken humanity. And so God Himself entered that reality, assuring us, “I get it.” The Incarnation reminds us: you are not alone.
It means I can trust the journey, and know—regardless of the disappointments that inevitably dent our zest for life—that God has not forgotten us, or failed to notice how difficult this existence really is. He gets it—and guarantees that it’s going to get better.
He makes that guarantee, not only as God, but also as one of us.
[1] When contemplating the Incarnation, it is wise to follow Ellen White’s advice: “The incarnation of Christ has ever been, and will ever remain, a mystery. That which is revealed is for us and for our children, but let every human being be warned from the ground of making Christ altogether human, such an one as ourselves, for it cannot be” (letter 8, 1895, in Ellen G. White, Letters and Manuscripts, vol. 10, p. 8).
[2] Ellen G. White, That I May Know Him (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1964), p. 64.