Even during this yuletide season I’m not sure that we who call ourselves Christians often give much thought to the profound event that we are about to celebrate, a miracle that exists at the very center of our faith. The Advent on earth of the universal God in human form is a mystery both blessed and sublime. We are all far the less spiritually if we do not take time at this season, or at any time of the year for that matter, to ponder the transcendent reality of God becoming a man.

No other religion in the world puts forth the idea of a Supreme Being so willing to identify with His deeply fallen human creation as to literally become one of them. That He would do so out of love because only such an “incarnation” would make possible our rescue from spiritual death becomes for us an incredibly sweet and compelling truth, if we but ponder it for a while. It is mind-boggling, yes, but even though we cannot completely comprehend the full ramifications of our Lord becoming a human being we can apprehend it in such a way as to open a door to one of the deepest blessings that we can know in our Christian walk.

Meditate for a time on the reality that we belong to a God who so loved us as to become one of us to make that “belonging” possible. What an indescribable descent must that have entailed for One who is infinite, eternal and uncaused Being. I once wrote that it is somewhat akin to a human being becoming a flea to save a world of fleas, but that barely begins to cover the magnitude of the descent we now consider. Along with the Resurrection itself His Advent is truly the miracle of all earthly ages.

Yet do not just use your intellect in your endeavor to experience the meaning of Advent, use your heart as well for this is also nothing if not an affair of the heart. How can our hearts not love Immanuel, “God with us”? Christmas testifies to the beginning of a new and profound opportunity for human intimacy with God, an intimacy with God as man. How can we remain unmoved by a Holy God, One “Wholly Other” as a German theologian once described his innate separation from us, becoming one of us? The mere fact of the Son of God becoming also the Son of Man is enough, in my opinion, to make Christianity the most compelling belief system on the planet. No one has a God like ours, no one, and it is Jesus, the God-Man who makes this so.

There is only one thing more compelling than the birth of Christ itself. That is the reality that the God who arrived on earth as one fully human over two-thousand years ago then proceeded to go to the cross and defeat death for what were now His fellow human beings as well as His creation. Contemplate that as well. He made us but because of Christmas He could also die for us….as one of us.

But then that part of the story is for another holiday (or more accurately another “Holy Day”) a few months from now.