Christmas is over and a new year has begun. Since becoming an adult, I have always considered Christmas to be the sweetest time of the year. The lights and decorations make everything seem so much more hopeful, brighter, lovelier, just more. The food is better, calorie counting long forgotten until new resolutions begin. Family all around. Children and church choirs singing about the hope of all mankind, generosity alive in the heart of even the worst scrooge. What a magical time. What a wonder.

As I was thinking about the birth of Jesus this year, it occurred to me that we romanticize His birth a lot. Like a lot, a lot. We know He was born in the least amount of grandeur, a meager manger and no place for Him at the Inn. The Son of God born in the dirt and dust that He Himself created. Shepherds, not kings or officials called to witness the King who had come. An angel’s proclamation creating a shepherd’s parade to find this babe that would change the world in unfathomable, infinite ways. His mother and stepfather having been obedient in all that the Lord asked them to do, must have been outcasts in their own little village. Satan’s first question in the Bible is “Did God really say..?” I’m sure he whispered that in every ear of those they had told that Mary was to give birth to the Son of God. That they were the talk of the town, I’m sure. I’m equally as sure that they were not the toast of the town. So here are two completely human beings, traveling 70-90 miles (depending on which resource you check) by foot, Mary fully pregnant and Joesph leading the way to the world’s most epic and important event, ever. When it came time Mary wasn’t surrounded by loved ones and homemade casseroles but by unseen heavenly hosts watching their God be born as a tiny human.

Colossians 1:19 says “For in Him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell”

How do we know His birth wasn’t as painful as His crucifixion? 

The fullness of God, the wholeness of God, the infinite Being of God poured into the frailest of human vessels. The infinite into the finite, the Ancient of Days into a vapor. The endless, timeless, boundless God of all creation contained in just one cell, then two cells, becoming 26,000,000,000 cells, forming His own human flesh in a womb. It’s unthinkable and it’s true.

Oh the glory, and the pain. Of course, He knew what He was getting into, He is God. But, but did it hurt? That transformation from Ultimate Deity to fragile flesh? To cry the cry of the weak and feeble? To go from creating to being the created? From prophecy to personhood? From serving manna to being a man? How? How could He do this? To love us so much that He would give up heaven for humanity. His and ours. What wild, outrageous love is this? Did He remember heaven? When He prayed did He talk to His Father in real time or did He wait for answers like we do? Bleeding, sweating, needing to eat and sleep and cry, it’s amazing to think He would take any of that on for us. Oh, but He did! He willingly did and from cradle to cross He loved us, loves us still.

I think we should celebrate His birth, our gift. I’m all for lights and trees and songs of praise. Not because the world has decided to honor His birth this way, but because it is what He did not get when He was born. It’s so like Jesus to not ever mention His pain. Not once did He speak of the heartbreak and grief He must have felt just being born. Never did He talk about the deep anguish of being rejected by His own brothers, His neighbors, by you and me. Who on literal earth would understand what He was going through? I just think that Christmas needs to be carried with us every day. Those unspeakable hurts in our hearts, those things no one can understand that we go through. He understands. His pain did not begin on the cross but prior to conception, knowing how it would all end. He knew that His pain would be our freedom.

I love His love. With my whole heart, I love His incomprehensible love. When Jesus said “No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13 CSB). He laid down His life for us in ways we will never know here on earth. That is by far the greatest love of all.