A Story Without End

The unmatched, inconceivable, incomprehensible, exhaustless story of Bethlehem.  The very idea that God would humble Himself and become a human being!  For real?  Yes, for REAL! 

            The many different stories that have come down to us from so many different cultures and people groups, show with what longing people have held to the original promise of God.  No matter how far from God, no matter how fallen from the original creation we have degenerated, we have looked and cried for the fulfillment of that first promise:  “God said to the serpent...I will put enmity (hatred) between you and the woman, between your seed and her SEED...”  (Genesis 3:14-15)  From Eve's joyous hope at the birth of her firstborn:  “I have gotten a man from the Lord”, (Genesis 4:1) down through the centuries the hope still burned, though it grew dim and almost went out.  All people everywhere looked for the time when a Savior would come to us to save us from the power and penalty of our sin. 

              We have chafed under the lash of our taskmaster – Satan.  And while there have been people who lived for God, who set worthy examples of what God can do for us in breaking the chains of the devil, yet they too were sinners and unable to help anyone else.  We needed, and still need, power outside of ourselves, yet wielded by Someone Who understands us completely.  The “Desire of all nations” (Haggai 2:7) must come, but how long O Lord, how long?

            “In the fullness of the time” set by our Heavenly Father, Whose purposes know no haste nor delay, “God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that He might redeem them that are under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.”  (Galatians 4:4-5)  Whoa! Redemption from sin is great, but to also be taken in as God's children?  To be treated as God treats His Son?  This is beyond comprehension!  To be as pure and holy as Jesus the Son of God? To be overcomers as He overcame?  To bask in the approbation of the Father?  What a glorious privilege, yea destiny, is ours! And all because of a Baby born in a manger in Bethlehem.            

            While we are never God as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are, yet because of that Baby born in Bethlehem we can be “partakers of the divine nature”. (2 Peter 1:4)  Because of that Baby of Bethlehem, in Whom was mysteriously blended the Divine and the human, there can be in us a blending of the human and the divine.  “Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior Who is Christ the Lord.” (Luke 2:11)  That Baby, born into this world as any other baby is born, nurtured and marked as any other human is nurtured and marked in the womb of a mother; that infant now has grown up and has been seated at the right hand of God on the throne of the universe!  Jesus, the Son of Man, at God's right hand, shows us how loved we are by God. That Baby reveals the plans God has for every human baby born into this world.  “How precious are Your thoughts unto me, O God!  How great is the sum of them!”  (Psalm 139:17)