Every year before Christmas I find myself thinking about this most amazing of stories...
A young woman, a virgin, was impregnated by the Spirit of God and gave birth to a child who would become the savior of all mankind. When you stop to think about the physics of it (or, perhaps it would be better to say, the metaphysics of it) it becomes...well, difficult to believe. I mean, every adult knows that pregnancy only happens one way - when a man impregnates a woman, and that woman is no longer a virgin. The story of Jesus' birth asks each of us to believe something quite the contrary to what each of us...knows...we "know" this cannot be.
Perhaps we can lay that aside; choose to believe that Jesus' birth did happen as the result of some man that God chose. What then? Then, Jesus would be just another baby who grew up to be just another man - a remarkable man, a sold-out-to-God man, but no more than a man. And his death would be just another death, his blood just another man's blood shed innocently. But, surely with no power to save even one person from their sins. No. If this baby was not divine, then we are not saved, and we are a people to be pitied for our grandiose delusion.
A young woman, a virgin, impregnated by the Spirit of God. Now, that would certainly be a miracle!
It would indeed take a miracle to produce a divine child, a child born of God's seed. But when you stop to think about it...is it any more remarkable than believing that a nation crossed the Dead Sea on dry ground, and again, later crossed the river Jordan on dry ground? Is it any harder to believe than that a man was thrown into a pit of hungry lions and was not torn to shreds? Any harder to believe than that three men were thrown into a fiery furnace and yet did not burn and came out fine? Is it any harder to believe that same baby died some 33 years after his birth, and three days later rose from the dead?
In fact, the bible is full of the miraculous - of God doing things our minds and our science cannot explain. It is no mistake that the apostle Paul says our gift of righteousness is "from faith to faith." Indeed, the Christian life is an ongoing call to faith in what God can do above and beyond what man can do. God can move waters out of the way for a people to pass through on dry ground. God can make hungry lions disinterested in fresh meat. God can keep three men in a furnace safe from the flames and the heat. And God can impregnate a virgin with his own seed and bring forth a divine human being who would later shed his holy blood for an unholy mankind.
Yes, Christmas is a miracle. Will you choose to believe in what God can do?
Addendum: "The Nativity" is a new film that's out, and is a beautifully realistic depiction of this miracle of miracles. It will really bring this story alive for your children as well.
