We might get a sentimental feeling when we hear “voices singing ‘Let’s be jolly!’” but nothing will comfort and encourage us more than singing about the Word-made-flesh. It’s a reality we will never fully plumb, not even in a million carols. Words fail us. The mystery is too great.

No Christmas story will ever surpass the original.

Each December, we’re reintroduced to the classic movies: It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, The Polar Express, Elf, The Santa Clause, Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Carol, White Christmas. In the midst of our chaotic, frenzied, and confused world, they can be a welcome distraction. But they all fall so far short of the greatest story: God himself born as human to save us. As J.I. Packer puts it, “Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the incarnation.”

In a similar way, we might get a sentimental feeling when we hear “voices singing ‘Let’s be jolly!’” but nothing will comfort and encourage us more than singing about the Word-made-flesh. It’s a reality we will never fully plumb, not even in a million carols. Words fail us. The mystery is too great.

But it’s worth trying.

Unexpected Arrival

A few years ago, I co-wrote a song with my good friend, Jason Hansen, that attempted to remind us why “nothing in fiction is so fantastic” as the incarnation. We called it “God Made Low.”

Prophets promised long ago a King would come to bring us hope
And now a virgin bears a son, the time to save the world has come

Even though few noticed his birth, Jesus didn’t appear without warning. His coming was foretold centuries before he came. He just wasn’t the king we expected. He entered our world through a virgin whose very body was fashioned by the baby she was about to deliver. Jesus came not as the king we would have thought — in splendor, glory, and triumph — but as a helpless babe, sustained and nourished by an exhausted teenage girl.

Just at the right time.

Hope Had Come

Humble shepherds run in haste to see the One the angels praised
In cattle stall they find a girl who holds the hope of all the world

The shepherds were understandably rattled by what they heard and saw the night Jesus was born — “sore afraid,” as the King James puts it (Luke 2:9 KJV). It would be the first and last time they’d see angels singing in the star-filled sky. But the glory of that sight would soon be surpassed by seeing the Son of God “wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger” (Luke 2:12).

In the midst of barn animals, the noxious filth of a stable, and a world unaware that hope had burst the bonds of our despair (Psalm 107:14), the Savior of the world had come.

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