On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me ...
The fact that people today probably know more about the identity of the 'partridge in the pear tree' than the 'baby in the manger' tells us that Christmas has become Xmas.
Peter Baker | 21:31, 17 December 2012
X is the unknown quantity in an equation. So we end up calling Christmas, Winterval or Yuletide, in part to hide the true reason for the season.
For this unknown X is Christ the mystery in the person of the God made man.
For this unknown X is Christ the mystery in the person of the God made man. The One who controls everything shrinks himself to be controlled by the very laws of nature he has made. It's like a great artist learning to paint by numbers.
Graham Kendrick the songwriter attempts to describe the mystery of the incarnation.
What kind of greatness can this be
That chose to be made small?
Exchanging untold majesty
For a world so pitiful
That God should come as one of us
I'll never understand
The more I hear the story told
The more amazed I am
The One in whom we live and move
In swaddling cloths lies bound
The voice that cried "let there be light"
Asleep without a sound
The One who strode among the stars
And called each one by name
Lies helpless in a mother's arms
And must learn to walk again
At the heart of the Christian faith then is a unique statement that the hinge of history swings on the stable door of Bethlehem. Time and space itself intersected by God with flesh. In all the particulars of his life, death and resurrection Jesus is God with us, God for us and by His Spirit, God in us.
All of that is wrapped up in the first day of Christmas. God sent the Son of His love, to live and die for a world He so loved.
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