Natalya Rustetska

For many modern Christians, God’s plan of redemption is all about “accepting Christ as my personal savior,” the well-known catchword of countless evangelistic rallies. Such a “selfie”-based theology vastly underestimates the cosmic dimension of the rescue operation God set in motion in taking on human form at Christmas to enter the world God had made. As the Apostle Paul tells us in the Epistle to the Romans, the divine plan of salvation is not “all about me,” for “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God (Romans 8:21, NRSV).” Ukrainian Greek Catholic Icon-maker Natalya Rusetska beautifully depicts God’s all-encompassing love for the Universe in this intergalactic Nativity scene. The participants in the Christmas story are placed as they would be in traditional Eastern Orthodox icons of the Birth of Christ but the manger in Bethlehem has now become the planet Earth—and our glowing home sphere, illuminated by the Christmas star, is but one of many worlds in the deep blue expanse of outer space. This cosmic Christmas image brings to mind the story of the origin of the Universe in the Book of Genesis with a forward spin to the closing chapters of the Book of Revelation and the apocalyptic final vision of a new Heaven and a new Earth. The Big Bang of the birth in Bethlehem has set in motion nothing less than the renewal of all God made at the first Creation! (John Kohan)