Incognito

During the Middle Ages, royalty would travel throughout their kingdom in disguise so that people would not know they were talking to a king or a queen. This was known as being incognito. Barclay tells the story of one such European royal who, against the advice of his advisers, continued to travel incognito in his realm. When they asked him to stop doing it, he replied, “I cannot rule my people unless I know how they live” (Barclay, Gospel of Luke, 28). In Jesus, we can see a God who set aside the glories of heaven for a humble life and then experienced life exactly as we do. We can have hope because our God is not far removed from sufferings. He is a man of sorrow (Isaiah 53:3) who has faced every temptation, and because of this we can approach him with our every need, without fear or hesitation (Hebrews 4:14–16).