Thielicke on the Incarnation

From Helmut Thielicke, I Believe: the Christian's Creed.

Isn't love much more than what a person feels on his wedding day, when the
heavens ring with music and the honeymoon beckons? Then even the heart of
a would-be Cassanova is brimful of what he is sure is love. But whether or
not it was really love becomes apparent only as the rice-showered couple creep
year by year through the prosaic pages of daily life--when illnesses or problems
with the children occur, or when one hurts or disappoints the other. At
these times, a really loving person does not leave the scene. On the
contrary, the worse it gets, the tighter his loving hands hold on. One
partner does not want to have it better than the other; if one lies sick in the
hospital, the other suffers every pain too, at least in spirit.

For this reason, we may believe God's heart belongs to us. He doesn't
give us a friendly nod of goodwill from heaven, but he suffers the fate of a
refugee with us as an inhospitable manger receives him and the flight into Egypt
stretches before him...That is the extent to which God becomes man, the extent
to which he loves us and wills to experience unconditionally what it means to be
human. Therefore we can believe in this love of his and be sure that be is
completely for us.