It’s Christmas... but... how real is God to you this Christmas?  Do you put God in the same category as elves and fairies?  Or do you accept that there’s such a being as almighty God but see him as distant, impersonal and uninvolved?

It may help you this Christmas to think about some ‘mysteries’.  A mystery is something puzzling... something that keeps us guessing and wondering.  The dictionary defines mystery as something difficult or impossible to understand or explain.  Well, Christmas is a mystery.  No, I’m not talking about the jolly gent in the red suit living at the North Pole.  No - there are three far greater mysteries in the original Christmas story.  And each one enriches our understanding of God.

The first great Christmas mystery is surely the mystery of the virgin birth.  It’s an awesome mystery. God caused a young woman to give birth to a child without a man’s involvement.  Joseph struggled with Mary being pregnant, knowing he was not the father.  He respectfully planned to opt out of the relationship until God told him in a dream that this was a special pregnancy that had not involved any unfaithfulness on Mary’s part.  God planned for Joseph to be Jesus’ foster father.

I once visited an aging scientist in a nursing home.  He loved talking about religion but baulked at the Christian teaching about the virgin birth.  He couldn’t reconcile that with the science, that it takes a male and a female, both contributing their DNA, to bring about new life.  But, hey, if an almighty creator God could make Adam from the dust of the earth what’s the problem with Jesus, the Son of God, taking on a human nature through the virgin Mary?  It’s a mysterious miracle that brings God a little closer.  He actually intervened in our human history to work out his saving purposes for a lost humanity.

The second great Christmas mystery is that this special birth was repeatedly predicted to happen.  The Bible’s very first prediction of the Christmas event is in the third chapter of the Bible.  Amazing!  Right at the dawn of human history God said that the seed of the woman would decisively defeat the seed of the serpent.  God said that through the seed of the woman he would begin to undo the brokenness of the world caused by our human disobedience back in Paradise.

Our Bible Study group worked through some prophecies of Isaiah this year.  What repeatedly blew us away was the mystery of predictive prophecy.  Some 700 years earlier God caused Isaiah to write down precise details about the coming Christ.  “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son...!”  And the prophecy: “To us a child is born, to us a son is given and the government will be upon his shoulders...!”  The mystery of Christmas being a fulfilment of Scripture should make God more real to us.  God made promises and He kept those promises.  No wonder Isaiah commences his 40th chapter with those lovely words: “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.”

There’s a third great Christmas mystery – a mystery wrapped up in the child’s name.  When Matthew’s gospel draws attention to Jesus’ miraculous birth being a fulfilment of Bible prophecy it quotes Isaiah and concludes with the prediction that his name will be called Immanuel.  Immanuel means: God with us!  That’s even more mysterious than the other two mysteries.  It’s the great mystery that in Jesus God Himself came down to earth to live with us.

A boy once accidently stepped on a Christmas beetle.  He watched the maimed insect trying to walk away and wished he could help the beetle... to put a splint on its leg and a bandage on its broken shell.  The only trouble was that the boys hands were too big.  To really help the beetle he would have to become small like the beetle.  In a some ways that helps us understand what God did in the manger on Christmas morning.  His hand are the big hands that shaped the universe.  But in Bethlehem those hands become small enough to be nailed one day to a cross; small enough to help us by dying in our place.  Immanuel, God with us.

Christmas is three mysteries rolled into one: the mystery of the virgin birth; the mystery of fulfilled Bible prophecy and the mystery of Immanuel, God with us.  If those mysteries don’t help make God more real to you then you haven’t really celebrated Christmas yet.

John Westendorp

Postscript:

This Christmas meditation is part of this year's Christmas Day Special Edition of  my "Songs of Faith" program on Narrabri Community Radio  - to be aired on Christmas Day at 10am.  You can listen in on the 'Community Radio Plus' App - search for 2MaxFM.  Thank you for your support and encouragement this year.   JW