from December 2, 2012 prayer update

Christmas. As much as many people enjoy the decorations, the music, the food, the gift giving, the time off from work, and the time with extended family, that is not what Christmas is about.

Christmas is all about the INCARNATION. God becoming man. God took the initiative to make the eternal and transcendent Creator of the universe understandable to man. Starting as a helpless infant, born to an unmarried teenager, living in poverty in a remote corner of the Roman Empire. And living, not for 33 years, but from that point forward into eternity future, as the God-man.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” – John 1:14

So why all the attention devoted worldwide to this annual holiday? Because Jesus is the hinge point of all human history. Nothing has been the same since this baby grew up to be a man. He spoke as no man had spoken before. He lived a sinless life. He made the infinite God understandable for the first time. He died as a substitute in our place to satisfy the justice of a holy and offended God. And He rose from the dead, opening the way for rebel mankind to be reconciled with his Creator. He is the reason that missions to least reached peoples around the world exists today.

Below are the words from “One Solitary Life” by Dr. James Allan Francis. It describes far better than I am able the impact of the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ on human history.

Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher.

He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put His foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place He was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself...

While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. While He was dying His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had on earth – His coat. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.

Nineteen long centuries have come and gone, and today He is a centerpiece of the human race and leader of the column of progress.

I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life.