The season of Advent is a time to prepare for the greatest event in history-- the undertaking by the Second Person of the Trinity of human form.  It is the event we call the Incarnation, the fact that God became human.  If you think about it, it is a truly shocking thing that the creator of the universe would take on our frail human form.  What a tremendous movement, from invinite power to our very-finite existence.
           Or is it? Maybe God is more like us than we might think. Sure, we're not like God when it comes to power and majesty, but perhaps there is something about us that would be very familiar to the Divine.  
         Perhaps we get a glimpse of that today, in Matthew's version of the discussion of the shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep to find the one who has "strayed." (Mt 18: 12-14).  The punch line of the story, which reminds one so much of the story of the Prodigal Son, is that the shepherd rejoices more over the finding of the one who strayed than over the 99 who did not, and the Father in heaven feels the same desire not to lose even one of us.
         Why is it that the finding of the one who strayed causes more rejoicing than the emotion experienced of having 99 who don't stray?  If you think about it logically, you would assume that the shepherd (or God) loves all 100 sheep equally, so havine the 99 safe should be just as important-- just as much a source of joy-- as finding the one lost sheep.  In fact, 99 who are safe should be 99 times as much a cause for rejoicing as 1 who now has become safe.
          But that's now how we humans think.  In any family when there is one child who is in trouble or has a problem, whether with health or with something else, there is much more rejoicing when that child is relieved of the problem than there is over 5 or 10 kids who are just fine.  We have worried so much over that one child, and have so much emotion invested in that child's situation, that when the problem with that child is resolved successfully, we feel an outpouring of emotion that is much greater than the emotion felt with the day-to-day fact that someone is doing fine.
           That's just how we roll, and it is how the father rolled in the case of the Prodigal Son.
           Maybe that's how God rolls too.  Maybe all the logic in the universe doesn't stand up to the Father's emotion when a problem-child gets cured. Maybe it is surprisingly-easy for the Father to empathize with us because the Father's emotional make-up is very much like ours.
           After all, we're made in the image and likeness of God.  So maybe from a physical perspective for the Son of God to become human was a tremendous leap, but from an emotional and internal perspective, the leap wasn't that great.  Maybe in that dimension God isn't as different from us as we might think.
          All things to ponder as we prepare for Christmas.  But maybe it is helpful to our relationship with the Divine to realize that internally God shares the best qualities of our human nature, only in a perfected form.  
         Perhaps God isn't so distant and unknowable after all.