was noisy, littered, and public, but he was absolutely correct; within a year we had all learned to speak the language. My experience in this village on Yap gave me a deeper grasp of what John meant when he wrote in his Gospel, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). We hold the incarnation as a fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith: God himself became flesh and dwelt among humans. We seldom ask, however, what the implications of this incarnation are. What did it