-Strength for Today- “The Christ Child was More Than Just a Baby.” - 2 Corinthians 9:15.

???Childbirth is something no man can completely appreciate. It’s a miracle?on its own.?Long ago, “in a crude place where animals slept,”?Mary reached down and?“beheld a?miraculous Life from her body.” In other words,?“she reached down”?and?“beheld the soft, human skin of infinite God.”?This miraculous scene pulls us in closer, so that now perhaps we can identify?“with Joseph’s confusion,” “Mary’s pondering thoughts,”?and?“the emphatic way” God allowed?“His Son’s?quiet arrival in such an inhospitable world.”???

??Now while all of those thoughts are?“magnificent to ponder,”?they can’t stop there,?because these?“were only an entrance,”?to?“wonders far deeper,”?and?“more significant yet to come.” Because just beneath “the soft, newborn skin of this beautiful story,”?is?“the flesh and bone of a theological truth,”?that goes all the way back?“to a plan that was set in place before time began.”?Therefore, “God becoming flesh;”?is?a doctrine?“that’s foundational to everything we believe as Christians.??

??When?God spoke to the serpent and said,?“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.”?And much later, the prophet Isaiah wrote these words centuries before God became man:?“Therefore, the Lord Himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive,?have a son, and name Him Immanuel”?-Isaiah 7:14. When Adam?“plunged all of humanity into sin,”?His?“disobedient”?“disconnectedness,”?became the?“polluted blood type for the whole human race –?Romans 3:23.?

And the result?“is a world subject to pain,”?of every conceivable kind: “hunger,” “thirst,” “sorrow, weariness,” “temptation,” disease,” “prejudice,”?and “grief.”??But over 2,000 years ago, God answered the anguished cry of humanity by making?“the problem of evil” His own.”?God Almighty became Immanuel, “God with us.” He lived as we live, suffered as we suffer, died as we die, yet without sin. And He, being the God-man, overcame the power of death in order to give us everlasting life.?

The plan is complete. Because when Jesus’s words from the cross ““It is finished!” (John 19:20), in other words,?“mission accomplished.”??There's nothing left for God to do,?“except patiently wait for His creation to respond.”?“For He’s not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance”?- 2 Peter 3:9c.?He will one day close the door of opportunity,?“either by your own physical death,”?or?“by bringing all earthly history to an end.”?

Today is an open invitation for you to slow down and think deeper. I invite you?“to touch the infant skin of the God-man with your imagination.”?and come with wonderment as did?“the shepherd,”?and the?“wise men did?when they?worshipped Him.”?I invite you to allow?“the God-man, Jesus,”?to take your own?“problem of pain”?and “make it His.". If you’ll accept my invitation, you’ll receive the greatest gift on earth, which is?“God’s unspeakable gift!”?

Author: Plez Lovelady, Jr., PhD

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