What If You Missed Christmas?

If you were on an ocean liner between the Orient and Vancouver, British Columbia and came to the International Date Line on the evening of Dec. 24th...when you awoke in the morning, it would be Dec. 26th. You would have missed Christmas!

And so, we ask, "What if there were no Christmas?" But the real issue is not whether we had missed Christmas, but what if there were no incarnation? What if Jesus had not come as "God with us"?

The incarnation is an amazing paradox...a puzzle. A paradox is something, or a statement, that seems absolutely contradictory, and yet is true. Here is something that is opposed to common sense, and yet, we accept it as fact.

It is the fact that God who is divine, also in Jesus, became human. The angel said to Joseph, "you shall call his name 'Emmanuel' which means 'God with us.'" Can God be God and still be "with us"? Can Jesus Christ be man, and still be the "Word become flesh"?

Jesus was a man, wasn't he? And yet he was God too, wasn't he? Was He a God‑man? Or was he a man who became God? What a puzzle it is...what a paradox.

His birth is so amazing that it is almost unacceptable. When he was born in Bethlehem, only two classes of people found Him: the shepherds and the wise men...the simple and the learned...those who knew that they knew nothing, and those who knew that they did not know everything!

In order to fathom the depths of the "Incarnation", we must come to realize that we do not know everything. Only then, is there the proper humility to approach the Christmas season.

The God‑man Jesus Christ was, and is so extra‑ordinary, that we must either accept him completely, or we must reject Him absolutely.

Two candles upon the altar, symbolize the incarnation. One represents the fact that Jesus was truly human. The other represents the fact that He was truly God. "God with us"...the paradox of the Incarnation.

I could jump a day, and miss Christmas as a holiday, if I had to. But I could never give up the message that is there. The message that God has come to walk with us along life's dusty trails, and that Jesus Christ, my friend, my elder brother, is also God, my Savior. I do not understand the mystery of this paradox. But I glory in the certainty of it. Jesus Christ has come...is always coming. He is "God with us!" Hallelujah!