:: The Humility of Christ's Birth ::

every christmas, sentiments of good cheer, love, warmth and happiness ring in the air, but the gospel accounts of the first christmas depict such a different tone.

we learn from Luke that when the angel appeared to Mary, she had been "greatly troubled" and "afraid". a young, unmarried woman carrying a child of questionable paternity in Jewish times would have been regarded as an adultress, subject to death by stoning. Today as i read the accounts of Jesus' birth i tremble to think of the fate of the world resting on the responses of two rural teenagers. how many times did Mary review the angel's words as she felt the Son of God kicking against the walls of her uterus? imagine the shame Joseph had felt living among villagers who could plainly see the changing shape of his fiancee.

and yet this was how Jesus came into the world. amidst terror, strife, and countless uncertainties regarding His fate. nine months of awkward explanations, the lingering scent of scandal - it seems that God arranged the most humiliating circumstances possible for His entrance. His life thereafter reflected similar sentiments as Jesus spent His infancy hidden away in egypt.

what did i learn about God on that first christmas?

His humility:

Before Jesus, almost no pagan author has used "humble" as a compliment. yet the events of christmas point to what seems like an oxymoron: a humble God. the God who came to earth came not in a raging whirlwind nor in a devouring fire. unimaginably, the Maker of all things shrank down, down, down, so small as to become an ovum. He literally "made Himself nothing", as paul had put it in Philippians 2. God is great, but God had once been little. once and for all, in Jesus, God found a way of relating to human beings that did not involve fear, unlike what most other religions are based on. the true and living God is an approachable God who shares our joy and our pain.


Source: "The Jesus I Never Knew" - Philip Yancey

1:08 PM |blessed.