A life extraordinary

The story of the birth of Jesus was widely known among the followers of ‘the Way’ (the early name for the Christian faith). Later, it was downplayed because this story was so outrageous—but to the earliest Christians, these were the facts. In many ways, The Christmas story is an ordinary story of a fairly poor family giving birth to a child in the usual unglamorous way.

… Except … that an angel appeared to the unmarried girl Mary, announcing she would become pregnant while she was still a virgin. Then an angel appeared to her fiancé Joseph. And then … another angel appeared to some shepherds, telling them that when they found a baby in a feeding trough, they would have found the saviour of the world. Oh, and to wrap it all up, an angelic chorus began singing ‘Glory to God in the Highest’ as a star lit up the sky and led the world’s greatest astronomers to Jesus.

God was exploding into ordinary, everyday lives with an extraordinary plan. That plan was a baby called Jesus.

One of us

The birth of a child. It’s a story that’s been told a million times over, in all corners of the earth. Yet it never ceases to be told with wonder. My husband and I had a baby boy a year and a half ago. One of the first things I remember my husband saying, in hushed tones of wonder, was ‘Jesus was a baby like this.’

When a child is born to us, we put our own lives on the line to care for them. They need us for food, shelter, the warmth of our body, the comfort of our cradling arms. They need us to gaze into their newborn eyes, they need our love or they don’t survive. Jesus was like this.

Our son is now a toddler, and he delights us with his comic genius. He runs away giggling when he knows he’s got something he’s not allowed. He says ‘uh oh’ before he throws food on the floor. He casually pops his big toe into his mouth. Jesus was like this, too.

Yet when the angels appeared at Jesus’ birth, they were proclaiming the wonder that Jesus was God in human form. ‘The holy one to be born will be called the Son of God,’ the angel told Mary (Luke 1:35).

‘A Saviour has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord,’ pronounced the angel before the shepherds (Luke 2:8).

God chose to come to us as the most vulnerable creature on earth: a baby human. He chose to be a delightful and undoubtedly sometimes infuriating toddler. And then a boy who grew into a man. This wasn’t God playing at being human; Jesus was a real person, who spent most of his life as a carpenter, living and loving among his large family, going to synagogue, growing in wisdom, and experiencing the breadth of joy and sorrow—as all humans do. Jesus was one of us.

God did not choose to show us his power from on high. God chose to be vulnerable, putting himself at our mercy and needing our love. The intimacy we share with our own children, is the intimacy with which God makes himself known to us.

Experiencing the story

When Jesus was born, the Bible tells us that Mary pondered these things in her heart. The angels, the shepherds, the wise men. Some things cannot be told. We ponder them in our hearts, as if too sacred for words.

When I first had my son, I wanted to go around asking everyone, ‘Why didn’t anybody tell me …?’ My world had turned upside down. But as I grew into motherhood, so did my sense of love and devotion for my son. I gazed at him, pondering these things in my heart. Who could have adequately explained it all to me? To be understood, it needed to be experienced.

And so it is with God, who calls himself our father, and Jesus, the Son of God. God uses these human terms to make known to us who he is. And who we are. He loves us with the intimate, heart-breaking, world-shaking love of a parent, gazing into the eyes of their child. It’s a love that cannot be told; it has to be experienced.

God gave us Jesus, as a way to experience his love.

An extraordinary plan

The boy Jesus grew up to be arguably the world’s most original thinker. For instance, he turned ideas of power upside down, saying it was the poor and powerless who were closest to God.

But the heart of Jesus’ message was that we can get to know God through him. ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,’ said Jesus. ‘If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him’ (John 14:6). These claims were so audacious, and so horrifying to religious leaders, that they arrested Jesus and put him to death.

But the culmination of all that Jesus came to this world for was not in his dying, but in his resurrection from death. In this triumphal act, Jesus showed that he was more powerful than death and that nothing could stop God from coming close to us.

In his life, Jesus showed us the way to God. In his death, he became the ultimate sacrifice for the world. And by rising again, Jesus built a spiritual, everlasting kingdom. This was the plan the angels sang of. This was the saviour the shepherds were told of, and this was the King who would reign forever—the one the wise men sought.

God had an extraordinary plan that began with the vulnerability of a baby, and ended with the salvation of the world.

The most amazing story on earth

Right at the beginning of the Christmas story—when the angel tells Mary she will become pregnant—she responds, ‘I am the Lord’s servant, may your word to me be fulfilled’ (Luke 1:38).

Some people find it hard to open their minds to a virgin birth, or angels, or God as a baby. For them, the Christmas story is just a nice tale. But Jesus’ life was not nice: it was radical and explosive, and his whole existence was a miracle. He healed the blind, the deaf, the lame, and even raised a man from the dead. These miracles were a sign to everyone that he was, indeed, God in human form. Starting at that most peculiar pregnancy.

The Bible tells us that when we put our faith in Jesus, we become his brothers and sisters. We can all experience the love of the Father: the adoring, life-giving, intimate embrace of a heavenly parent to his child. We belong to him.

We just need minds that are open to the wonder of God’s story —and a heart that is open to his love. This is the most amazing story on earth, and it can’t just be told, it needs to be experienced.

Like Mary, we simply need to say, ‘Yes Lord, I believe, may your love story be fulfilled in me.’

By Ingrid Barratt