This month, we celebrate the events that happened thousands of years ago, events centered around the town of Bethlehem, the city where King David was born and raised. The city that the prophet Malachi prophesied would be the birthplace of the Messiah.
We marvel at the wise men who came from the East and encountered God through a star. These were men who, despite being foreigners and feeling different, were compelled to find the King of the Jews and worship him. And we stand in awe at the story of the shepherds, who encountered the presence of God through the angels while working in a field. These lowly servants were simply going about their daily lives, discounted in so many ways, yet were compelled to see the things the angels had told them about.
We also encounter Mary — a Middle Eastern teenager, a virgin, who was with child. Mary, who made her way to Bethlehem with Joseph, her fiancé, to be counted in the census. Mary, who gave birth to our Savior in the equivalent of a stable, surrounded by animals.
The angel Gabriel describes Mary as one who had found favor with God. Mary describes herself as one whom the generations will call blessed.
We might describe Mary as devoted, the one chosen by God to carry his son. She was a woman endowed with grace. She found favor not because of anything she had done, but because of what God was going to do in and through her.
Mary was also a lowly servant girl, and as an unwed pregnant teenager, she felt different, like the wise men, and was discounted, like the shepherds. Yet regardless of her stature, Mary was one in whom God dwelled and delighted. She was the one he trusted to carry his most precious treasure.
The coming of God in Jesus was about so much more than just her, but he couldn’t have accomplished his purposes without her.
You see, God could have chosen to come into the world in so many ways — mounted on a chariot, straddling a stallion, or floating on angel’s wings. He could have come fully grown, trained, privileged, and already in charge.
But instead, God came to us floating in embryonic fluid.
There was a moment in history when Jesus was conceived. When he began to form and take shape. When he was embedded in Mary’s uterine wall. When his presence was not seen as a star or heard as angels’ voices but was felt as the nagging discomfort of morning sickness. There was a time when he was enclosed in darkness, tucked into the safety of Mary’s womb, possibly even sitting on her sciatic nerve.
What does it say about God that he was willing to:
- Be attached to a placenta for nourishment?
- Be formed in a human womb?
- Come into this world tiny, naked, and afraid?
- Be fearfully and wonderfully made, just like us?
- Trust the process of childbearing with a human mother?
It tells us that, like Mary, we too are ones in whom God dwells and delights. It assures us that we are highly favored and that God has endowed us with grace. And as ones who believe, we experience that grace as the Holy Spirit living within us, drawing us near.
So this month we celebrate that gift. The gift that began with Christ’s coming. The gift that came from afar to bring us near. Because of that gift, we can encounter him … like the wise men, like the shepherds, like Mary, in the stars, the fields, and childbirth — in the unlikely corners of our lives.
