The Incarnation

I love Christmas.

The fact that God loved humanity that He would enter history as the most helpless of His own creatures--as a human baby--really blows me away. He left heaven to be born of an ordinary young woman, to be raised by ordinary parents, to live among us--simple and ordinary as we are. He willingly put himself into a position where he had to learn to walk, talk, eat and play like you or me. He wasn't pretending to be a baby and biding His time until He could--ta daa!--remove the mask and show that He was the Messiah. He really knew hunger and felt wet swaddling clothes and heard sweet lullabies and woke up Mary and Joseph many times in the middle of the night. He really put on human flesh so that he could be one of us.

This is the central message of Christmas that never gets old for me, that never gets buried by the commercialism and the hype. Jesus loved us so much that he lived and died and rose again--YES, that is the gospel. But it all starts with a squealing infant who needed his parents and was completely dependent on them for his very life. What a miracle.