Merry Christmas readers,
This year I want to muse on what makes Christmas so important.
Yes Jesus was born. But think about that – he was born.
Here is what separates Christianity from the many gods and mythologies of our past. None of them were both God and Man. True there are myths of demigods, but those are the offspring of gods and humans. Jesus is the one true creator, God incarnated in flesh.
Odin never went through puberty. Zeus never had to deal with paper cuts or sprained ankles. Jupiter never had to hold boards in the carpentry shop when he’d rather be at the temple arguing philosophy with the teachers.
Can’t you just imagine a gangly teenage Jesus popping a zit saying, “Seriously, ugh puberty, what was I thinking?”
Standing up to a bully, listening to the taunt, “Make me Carpenter’s kid.”
Jesus standing his ground, the power of creation flashing behind his eyes, saying, “I could, but never forget that I won’t.”
Or watching the blood well up after pulling a splinter, the enormity of what he was doing suddenly coming to him and thinking, it’s not time for this to spill yet.
Some people might think it’s blasphemy for me to humanize the savior so much but that is the point of Christmas. God humanizing himself is the reason for the season.
God the Creator in the form of his creation. He must have been a genius. Think about it, Jesus must have been able to look at a glass of water and know each of the individual oxygen and hydrogen atoms. He could look at the night sky and know the ages and the distances of the stars. He must have been spouting numbers all the time. Angles and measurements in the workshop, Distances and times while traveling.
Do you suppose that Man was created in the image of God because God knew that one day he would take on the Image of man?
That is what so many people forget. The religious are worried about the forgiveness of sins and spiritual blessings. The secular are worried about gifts, food and the trappings of this world. But Christmas is about both. The spiritual and the Human becoming one. So rejoice, be merry, and read your Bible. Merry Christmas—God was born.
C. O. Bonham 