Thursday, December 25, 2008 Hagad: A great and eternal love By Andy Hagad Bottomline
DID you know that as early as 700 years before Jesus Christ was born, prophets were already predicting His birth and His Mission on earth?
Isaias, for example, talked about the virgin who was going to conceive and give birth to the Son of God, whom she will name "Emmanuel". The prophet Micah even pinpointed Bethlehem as the place where the child Jesus will be born. These and many other predictions about the Nativity are faithfully recorded in the Old Testament, the authors of which walked the earth hundreds of years and almost fifteen generations before Christ's own generation saw the light of day. What better proof do we need that the Story of Christmas is true?
Christmas is the story of God's eternal love, a love so great that He just had to share it with us - and let us know of it in a way that we, with our mortal limitations, can understand and accept.
I suppose Jesus could have descended upon us in a blaze of glory, with angels' trumpets blaring, thunder and lightning adding both sound and majesty to his descent from heaven, standing on a white cloud. In our human minds that would have been more "God-like", something we would expect to see in a Cecil B. Demille or Steven Spielberg movie. That would have impressed presidents and the leaders of the most powerful nations on earth. But how would that have looked to the billions among us who are poor, un-educated and quite literally "un-washed"? They would probably have cowered in fear at the sight, certainly not a good way for God to show eternal love.
It is for that reason that God's coming to earth poor, unrecognized, turned away by people with homes, in an animal pen bathed only in the great love of Joseph and Mary was probably the best and the only way to prove how much He cared for us. Jesus began his earthly life like the poorest among us, started his ministry with them, worked his way up to the high and the mighty, died on the cross when his work, his miracles and his reputation had already become well-known in Judea, and resurrected already at the point when we could understand the reason why He did all of these.
God did not have to do it. He is Everything, Everyone and Everywhere, and he needed nothing from us. But Jesus came down because He loved us, giving us that Love in the purest way, by dying on the cross for us without demanding that we love Him back.
What a great story! What a great God! A Blessed Christmas to All!
