The Ultimate God-Connection

My mother isn't a person of strong faith. But she does seem to approach the Christmas season with a kind of awe.
I think it's the music. It seems to help her feel a connection to God.
There's something undeniably majestic about music that was composed by incredibly talented musicians, inspired to express their faith.
Few people are unmoved by Handel's Halleluiah Chorus, or Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring.
Even for people I know who deny that Jesus is the Son of God, the beautiful music still fills most of them with a sense of yearning for connection with an eternal and immense Something or Someone they cannot define.

Connection.

That's what Christmas is all about: God reaching downward to connect with His man-creation,
through Jesus Christ.
No matter how long and hard I think about it, I still cannot wrap my mind around the thought that God chose to begin His earthly life as a embryo in the body of a woman. That this woman labored, just as every other woman labors, then pushed God out of her womb.
He took His first breath. Waah! They probably wiped his bloody, and amniotic-slicked body with straw. He would have cried some more because it's cold in a cave, and they would have quickly washed Him and covered His little body with strips of cloth. Mary would have comforted Her son. Probably tried to nurse Him. Then He would have quieted and finally, they would have laid Him in that manger. God, lying in a manger, taking His first breath of straw and blood and animal dung.
The Almighty, the Great I AM entered time and space so that He could experience what we experience, so that He could be both God and man.

Connection.

"All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: "the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a Son, and they will call Him Immanuel --which means,

'God with us.'"

Note, the scripture says, "God with us."

Not, we with God.

What God knew we could never, ever do --reach upward and connect with God --

He did for us by reaching downward:

"Infant holy, infant lowly, for His bed a cattle stall;

Oxen lowing, little knowing Christ the Babe is Lord of all.

Swift are winging angels singing, noels ringing, tidings bringing;

Christ the Babe is Lord of all, Christ the Babe is Lord of all." (Infant Holy, Infant Lowly/Polish carol)

I will not be posting this Thursday, Dec. 23rd. Look for my regular posts to begin again on Monday, Dec. 27th. Have a blessed Christmas; may you draw near to Christ!