The Christmas season is here again! Christmas in Southern California is very different from the traditional Christmases pictured on cards and described in books. Here we enjoy the fact that the days are cooler—often in the 60’s and low 70’s—and some of the trees sport a short burst of yellow, orange or red leaves before they drop. While the leaves fall, the oranges, persimmons, and avocados ripen, and nighttime temperatures drop low enough, sometimes, for the lawn to be frosted in the morning.
Even in Southern California, however, Christmas is about the Baby. The Child we celebrate this season has lit this darkest month of the year with celebrations of Light and Life for over 2,000 years. In fact, Christmas is one of the ways our sovereign God has let the entire world hear about Jesus. Even the spiritually darkest places on earth know about Christmas, and the Christmas King knows how to bring those people that walk in darkness into the light.
This December we have a real-life baby to remind us of that day that occurred “in the fulness of time”. Brian and Sarah Cain had their second child, a son, yesterday. Brian’s faith story is in the March/April, 2008, issue of Proclamation! (you can read it online here: Rebuilding the Foundation of My Faith).
This birth, and the birth of their daughter 18 months ago, are miracles of God. Sarah had been told she would not be able to bear children and that she needed a hysterectomy. Even after receiving a second opinion and having robotically-assisted surgery to remove two tumors, she was given less than a 50% chance of conceiving. Sarah entrusted herself to the Lord Jesus and asked for His will and provision and for the ability to trust Him with the outcome.
Yesterday as Richard and I sat in the hospital room with Brian, Sarah, and several other loved ones, I was overcome again by God’s faithfulness. His provision for reconciling our race to Himself has included a series of miracle births over a span of millennia, and yesterday I watched another example of God’s revealing Himself by creating life where science said life shouldn’t be possible. Like Sarah who bore the son of promise, Sarah Cain gave birth, against the odds, to a son whose days have been written in God’s book before one of them came to be (Ps. 139:16).
One of the friends who was there yesterday said to me, as we were pondering the tiny child, “Jesus was that size.”
Imagine. The Savior was a newborn, and “all the fullness of Deity” was in that baby’s body (Col 2:9). Moreover, that Deity was not squelched nor abandoned so He could be “just like us”. On the contrary, He emptied Himself of His glory not by abandoning any part of His identity or of His attributes but by taking on something more: humanity. The Lord Jesus, the Mighty God, took on a human body and submitted Himself to being completely dependent upon a first-time mother and upon a God-honoring stepfather who said “Yes” to Him.
Both Joseph and Mary said “Yes” to God’s request to parent His Son in a human body. Both of those parents endured shame, gossip, and extreme hardship as they protected that small child from the murderous rage of Herod and later travelled back to Galilee when out of Egypt God called His Son (Mt. 2:15).
In fact, God’s provision to send His Son as our Savior included His call on Joseph and Mary. We often think of the high cost of Mary’s obedience to bear the Son of God under a cloud of scorn and infamy. We don’t always ponder, however, the fact that Joseph was God’s choice to care for Mary and to be a godly role-model to the growing Jesus. Joseph gave up his plans for a “normal” life and agreed to protect and love Mary and to receive Jesus as the child of his heart.
Mary and Joseph both gave up their plans and dreams and received something far bigger than they could have imagined: they became the parents of their own Savior. They nourished and protected a Child whose existence was physically impossible. They lived the rest of their lives in the pain and the peace of a miracle. God had created Life where life was not physically possible, and that tiny life was the Sacrifice that reconciles us to God. That Baby is the reason we can be born again.
This Christmas God gave us the birth of a miracle baby, a tangible celebration that pulls us into the eternal celebration of the Baby of Bethlehem. Our Savior is born—moreover, He died and has risen from death and is seated at the Father’s right hand!
Because of that Baby, we who have faith in Him receive His guaranteed promise: He “gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist” (Rom. 4:16-17).
Rejoice in the Baby and receive His Life! †
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